Nicky May

Nicky May has painted since she was a small child. She started her career in the voluntary sector, including Voluntary Service Overseas in Papua New Guinea and Kenya. She worked in senior management for Oxfam, and then a series of voluntary organisations, as well as doing freelance work evaluating the effectiveness of development projects in Africa and Asia. Painting was throughout all this time her refuge, and a way of looking more closely at the world around her.

She turned seriously to painting in 1994. Her only formal art training was through the Open College of the Arts. She spent many years under the tutelage of Norman Rechter, a renowned European watercolourist, and more recently has been fired up by a series of workshops by the abstract landscape painter and teacher, Louise Fletcher.

In 2002 she gained a Diploma in Studio Ceramics, and worked mainly as a potter for 10 years or so, making sculptural pots. In 2012 she was “called” back to the easel by a strong need for colour and since then has concentrated on painting.

She is a member of The Cornwall Watercolour Society and East Cornwall Society of Artists. She has shown work in galleries and exhibitions through the South West and in Oxford and London.