Jo Loring-Fisher graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in 2001, with a BA(Hons) in Graphic Design-Illustration.

With a love for children’s book illustration, Jo is particularly inspired by international illustrators past and present - Marc Boutavant, John Bauer, Lisbeth Zwerger, Tove Janssen, Georg Hallensleben, Tao Nyeu, Sara Fanelli, Komako Sakai and Eva Montanari to name but a few, as well as the British talent of Alexis Deacon and Claire Fletcher.

The landscape of Wiltshire is the inspiration behind Jo’s latest body of work. Entitled Red Flag, the series includes paintings, digital prints, collage and photographs. The images are divided into subsections, Fragments, Strata and Red Flag paintings with their individual titles.

The title Red Flag is a reference to the military presence of the area. The red flags fly when the army are training, as a warning not to enter the extensive Salisbury Plain training areas. Jo’s work is about the juxtaposition between the peace and majesty of this sage and ancient landscape and the daily reminder of modern conflict offered by artillery explosions, overhead helicopters and the continual movement of troops, equipment and modern fighting machines.

The Wiltshire landscape is as diverse as it is spectacular, with its weather beaten contorted trees, extensive and ancient agriculture terraces etched into the hillsides by millennia of human labour, like the contours denoting the hills and valleys on a map. Jo includes maps in her pieces and works into them with acrylic paint and pencil creating subtly textured images. Lines are drawn repeatedly on the paintings giving them a woven quality, and refer to the grooves and terracing that exist on the hills in the area.  These lines cover the land itself and sometimes the sky as well. They give the effect of looking through a veil at the images and therefore a detachment from the piece-just as those living in and around Salisbury Plain are detached from the restricted areas and the mysterious activities of the army.

Jo is also working on a series of seascapes inspired by the Rame Peninsula in Cornwall.  Jo lives in Wiltshire with her husband and children and is a member of the AOI.

Jo can be contacted by email jo.moonfish@googlemail.com and her blog followed at www.joloringfisher@blogspot.com