She may be small in stature. Yet her paintings are anything but. In fact give Ange Mullen-Bryan a space - no matter how big - and she will fill it with confident, bold, large strokes. Her oil paintings depicting Swedish woods, forests and landscapes, display something of the inner world of this outwardly shy, modest artist. She admits she is not confident or bold as the work she produces and tends to shy away from the limelight. Her oil canvases are self-assured, dynamic and by no means shrinking violets - more like giant sunflowers searching for the light. They are striking, deserving recognition.

Stroud Life Article by Tracy Spiers Jan 2010

The paintings illustrate an actual simple landscape of Sweden and the clean lakes and deep forests that you find there, yet each work is a chaotic and emotional journey.

Each painting has a life of its own, as if I release a small creature from a smaller
cage and let it find its way. It has been nurtured and tamed but bound and held in, now it takes tentative steps into the unknown. It sniffs around to find its place, then it frollicks about as it discovers itself free, and then it runs.

      Just let it lead me like a small mammal into the woods,

      crawling in front of me, weaving between the trees.

There it is, follow it, keep it in sight.

Illusive thing, sometimes hidden in moss, or in shadows,

But I catch a chunk of light in pale lemon on its back and I have got sight of it again.

I must be so quiet, if it notices me it’ll run so fast and be gone,

And there aren’t two creatures like it, just one.

So I creep along behind, quickly and very quietly, in the dark of tall trees,

Feeling light on me for brief moments only.

 

Whilst beguiling you, they are unsettling too, they pull you in with delicious colours and flick you back out with an abrasiveness.

 I invite an escape into a kind of utopia, where you can smell freedom and pine in the air, a place I think I know. Yet I nod to the nagging impossibility of it and
remind you that good fairy tales have a lesson within them.

I tell darker tales and dress them up in the fabric, the costume, of colour and light.

AMB.