Celia trained as a portrait painter and has painted numerous distinguished sitters, including the poet Craig Raine; the historian Sir Antony Beevor; the actor Neil Dudgeon; the creator of Inspector Morse, Colin Dexter; Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, former editor of the Sunday Telegraph; and numerous others. She finds the study of character deeply alluring, and her quarry in painting even the most formal of portraits is the spirit of the person rather than the office.
In 2010 she bought herself a high-topped van with rear double doors in order to explore the landscape in all weathers with her paints. Since then she has painted en plein air in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wales, and most prolifically - on foot – in Venice, where she also has a studio looking on to the water.
Venice is an endlessly changing and changeable subject, delicate beyond words. To try and interpret its atmosphere and convey its poetry is an enduring preoccupation.
Oxfordshire too, the county in which she lives, has a piece of her heart. She frequently finds herself painting there in the rain, leading to a meditative mood in the work.
Celia trained in London as a painter at Heatherleys School of Drawing and Fine Art, where she took the Diploma in Portraiture, and subsequently for two years at the then Prince’s Drawing School, where she studied life painting with Andy Pankhurst.
