Prue Bishop

Prue Bishop

Prudence Mary Bishop (née Taylor), known as Prue Bishop, is a British/French landscape painter and watercolourist who has become known for devising an artistic genre called 'Sculptural Watercolour' that is a Registered Trademark.

Her definition of Sculptural Watercolour is very specific: the application of paint made of pigments suspended in gum arabic onto a pliable paper carrier that may be cut and formed to allow artistic freedom in the third dimension; the result being a unified watercolour.

Prue Bishop was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, at a time when her father, Acting Lieutenant-Colonel George Nelson Taylor OBE TD MA Cantab, a historian and accountant, was engaged in post-WW2 Germany. Her mother, Mary Taylor (daughter of renowned ophthalmologist Dr John Burdon-Cooper), was one of the first women to have a Cambridge University degree in Modern Languages fully recognised. Prue Bishop's secondary education was at Westonbirt School, Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England.

After a four-year course of study at Newcastle upon Tyne College of Art and Industrial Design (now the University of Northumbria at Newcastle), she attained first-class passes in all practical subjects and was later awarded a Bachelor of Arts Degree by the then Council for National Academic Awards.

The Council of Industrial Design registered her as a British Designer, and she worked for a while at the then Design Centre in London's Haymarket where Lord Snowdon was the celebrity figurehead. Her innovative designs for a series of tubular-chrome chairs that included flat-pack versions, attracted considerable attention at a special 'Prototype Furniture' exhibition.

She also contributed designs during the restoration of Elsdon Tower, a Grade One Listed medieval building in Northumberland, where she also acted as an occasional tour guide, helping to put it firmly on the tourist circuit.

In 1969 she joined Caravans International in Newmarket near Cambridge, working with the founder Sam Alper and Mrs. Alper, contributing colour coordination to the interiors of the 1970 Sprite series.

Following post-graduate study at the University of Leeds, she became a qualified teacher, taking up a position as Art, Craft and Design teacher at Ripon Grammar School, Yorkshire.

Her early artwork and designs were influenced by recalling the fundamental thinking of the college sculpture lecturer Fenwick Lawson, whose own influence may be traced to Jacob Epstein, and by the processes adopted by Pablo Picasso that were embraced by other lecturers at that time. Central to Lawson's sculptures is the idea that the artwork should emerge from and relate to the material from which it is made. Taking up this theme and combining it with Picasso's innovative processes, Prue Bishop perceived a direct link between nature's natural processes and those that she would devise for herself as a designer-artist.

The next phase of her life was devoted to supporting her military and diplomatic husband and bringing up their two children. Her duties required her to be fully engaged in all representational aspects on behalf of the United Kingdom. These were years in which she gained an in-depth first-hand knowledge of Continental Europe centred on Switzerland. She also taught at the International School of Berne.

In the 20 years from 1980, the family holiday home was a chalet in the Alps near Annecy, surrounded by high mountain peaks; a region she already knew intimately from over 10 years of skiing and walking, and in the mid-1990s, she was engaged to teach classes in Decorative Art in Vevey, Switzerland for associates of Nestlé.

Her own artwork once again moved forward, combining her extensive knowledge of wood with her three-dimensional design inventiveness. She used wood veneer to make pictures of mountains, streams, rock and ice, where the wood-grain depicted stratified rock, pools of water, and so on. In 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, she was selected to exhibit these works by The Society of Women Artists, and in 1999, 2002, and 2003 by The United Society of Artists. She was also selected as a finalist in The Laing Art Competition 2000, and in 1999 and 2002 invited to display works at the Gloucester Festival.

At some of the above exhibitions, she used paper instead of wood, giving her the freedom to introduce the entire colour spectrum. She called on her love of watercolour from childhood days that had been inspired by her paternal grandfather George Pike Taylor and his love of the Northumbrian countryside, notably around Wooler and his ancestral home in Norham. The door was now opened to considerable further development that also embraced nature's natural processes and three-dimensional design that led to the unique formulation breakthrough that she called Sculptural Watercolour®.

In 2001, Winsor & Newton quickly recognised the innovative nature of her application of watercolours and sponsored her with materials.

Outside London, she exhibited several times at the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts, and in France at the then prestigious 'Grand Prix International de la peinture à l'Eau à Tregastel' where she was publicly commended as a painter ‘of considerable international repute’.

In 2009, 2010 and 2011 she supported children in need at the 50-nation International Art Exhibitions in the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, where she was joint-curator.

Central to her success is experimentation to push the boundaries of watercolour into new areas by trying out advances that continue to be made with pigments. She has become a specialist in the origin and effects of pigments, making her own paints, and she is particularly appreciative of the two decades of technical support she has received from the founder of Kremer Pigmente  in Germany, Dr Georg Kremer, and his staff.

She personally designed a new art-gallery and home just outside Geneva. “La Galerie” was opened in 2006 and became her centre for the production of ever-more interesting, innovative and exciting work.

In the early 2020s she decided on a series of Sculptural Watercolour® paintings specifically aimed at encouraging everyone to contribute to halting Global Warming, and expressing her deep personal concern over the disappearance of Alpine Glaciers.

In parallel with her own artwork, she has become an acknowledged expert in the works of JMW Turner, providing subjects for many of his previously unrecognised watercolours and sketches notably in the French, Italian and Swiss Alps and the Chartreuse Mountains. Her research papers are published in London's The British Art Journal and  available from JSTOR.

Her artworks are in private collections mainly in the USA, Switzerland and France. A comprehensive presentation of both her artistic and academic work is to be found at her official web site https://pruart.com/

A Swiss company, Art and Publishing GmbH, became responsible in 2024 for commercialising her academic and artistic work.