Kristina Stedman is a local Sussex artist who paints highly detailed acrylics and watercolours of landscapes, animal portraits, classic cars, and other subjects. These are also available as limited edition prints and cards.
Commissions taken for paintings, contact me for more details.
I was born in Kuching, Sarawak, in Borneo. My mother was Swedish, from a large farming family in northern Sweden, and my father, who was an officer in the King's African Rifles and the Australian army during World War Two, joined the Colonial Office and was the last District Officer to serve under Rajah Brooke in Borneo in the final white Rajah Administration.
My family returned from Borneo when I was two years old and subsequently lived in Canterbury, Bath, and then Cambridge before we settled in East Grinstead, Sussex. While in East Grinstead, I ran a framers and small art gallery called Spectrum Galleries where my childhood interest in the colour and detail of local flora and fauna was re-ignited.
Shortly after my marriage and move to Newhaven on the Sussex coast, in 1983, I started painting professionally, beginning purely with watercolours and then moving on into the use of acrylic (although I have not completely abandoned the use of watercolour).
I am to a great extent a self-taught artist although I successfully completed a three-year part-time Certificate in Art course at what was then Brighton Polytechnic, in 1990. At the start of my professional work, I concentrated on painting local scenes of interest (landscapes and architecture). However, my repertoire of subjects soon widened, and has continued in this vein to include motorbikes and classic cars, birds and insects, and other animal subjects including pet portraits.
I have exhibited and sold at the Royal Institute of painters in Watercolour in London, as well as the Sussex Artists and Photographers Exhibition at the Brighton Museum, and I have also taken part and had solo exhibitions of my work in Sussex.
Currently, I have my work for sale with Alfriston Arts in Alfriston, and also sell at periodic fairs and markets in the local area. A number of my paintings have also been illustrated in a book entitled, A Picture of the South Downs: Art in the National Park, by Terry and Christine Timblick, and I myself continue to live and work in Newhaven.
I should also just mention that I have occasionally ventured into the more commercial world of graphic art, for example designing a logo of a red kite for Nigel Morgan's successful vineyard in Radnage, Buckinghamshire.
I have built up my customer base by producing limited edition prints and cards of my paintings and these are sold at Alfriston Arts, Alfriston where I have been selling since 1997; and I also sell at various temporary venues in Sussex.