VICTORIA BADEN-POWELL

Victoria Baden-Powell has lived variously in Malaysia, the Channel Islands, Ireland, London, New York, Holland and the Scottish Borders. She received formal tuition in painting and drawing from two good artists, Francis Cook and Caroline Leeds, in Jersey, from the age of six and was awarded an Art Scholarship at the age of twelve to Benenden School in Kent.

Colour is paramount and its influence on mood, virtual and actual, is always evident in Victoria's work. Aged 20, in New York, she made her first experimental Pointillist painting and was immediately enraptured by the animating, enlivening effect achieved simply by the juxtaposition of one colour, pure or blended, with another. Victoria explored all possibilities offered by this style, until overnight, in 1996, she "broke free" of the constraint of neat, uniform dots of colour and expanded into larger, irregular patches of colour mixed on the palette, these linking solid lines being used as guiding, steadying bands, imposing order and adding energy and balance. They are never used randomly, but always specifically in order to strengthen the composition and to ratchet up the energy levels, a crucial, ubiquitous aspect of Victoria's work.

Such a unique and personal amplification of "Pointillism" can best be categorised under the heading of "Chromoluminarism", embracing as it does the main tenets of both Pointillism and Divisionism under its banner. What cannot, and should not, be ignored, is the joyful, almost celebratory approach, embraced by the artist, which shines forth, irrepressibly, from every work.

"Victoria Baden-Powell is one of those fortunate and rare artists who has not only a natural talent but a powerful need to express herself in painting. Every mark made by her brush has a kind of intensity that only a truly innocent eye can achieve" Richard Demarco

"Victoria's works intrigued me right from the start. It is interesting to note that in some countries, as in Britain, artists continue to work in certain styles that have been adopted for over a hundred years, but at the same time, they gradually develop it into their own very personal style ... The variety manifested in her landscapes and cityscapes certainly intrigues, but above all, convinces us of her ability to lead us all into a new phase of Art History." Ivo Bouwman

"[Victoria's paintings] bear witness to a highly original vision, at once both sophisticated and naïve in a fine art sense ... The experience is exciting and refreshing." Sir Edward Gage, The Scotsman 

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

1977 Solo Exhibition: Fortescue Swann Gallery, London
1977 Young Scottish Painters Exhibition, Edinburgh Festival, Scotland
1978 Solo Exhibition: Fortescue Swann Gallery, London
1980 Scottish Arts Council Exhibition, Hawick, Scottish Borders
1980 Malcolm Innes Gallery, Edinburgh
1981 Solo Exhibition at Oliver Swann Gallery, London
1982 Inaugural Chairman of SASCE (Scottish American Society for Cultural Exchange), a charitable foundation facilitating an exchange of contemporary art between Edinburgh, London and New York.
1983 Solo Exhibition at the Oliver Swann Gallery, London
1985 Three Artist Exhibition at J Radcliffe Ewing Gallery, Palm Beach, America
1986 Solo Exhibition with Marshall-Schule Inc, New York
1992 Solo Exhibition with Galerie Chardin, Paris
1996 Solo Exhibition at Chelsea Arts Club
1997 Summer Exhibition, Bruton Street Gallery, Mayfair, London
1999 Commissioned by Messrs. Cassels, publishing house, to describe and illustrate methods used by the artist when she paints furniture, subsequently published.
2002 Begins to divide time between London and Holland
2006 Pastel Society Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London

2006 RBA Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2006 Cross Gate Gallery, Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.A.
2006 Cross Gate Gallery, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A
2006 First Retrospective Exhibition, at invitation of Carel Bloys van Treslong and Capital Support Group, assisted by Messrs. Sothebys, in the Hague, Holland.
2007 Pastel Society Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2007 RBA Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2008 RBA Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London
2008 Exhibition of limited edition prints in Wassenaar, Holland
2010  Returned to live in the Scottish Borders

2012 Exhibition of recent and key works in oils and pastel at the Ivo Bouwman Gallery, The Hague.