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 says they're her voice. And if they could indeed speak, they would shout what she thinks and feels, probably from the highest roof top. She admits she is not confident or bold as the work she produces and tends to shy away from the limelight. Yet in her new solo exhibition, Winter Paintings, which opens at the former Illustration Gallery in Middle Street, her masterpieces demand to be noticed. 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 - something their creator shies away from.

"It's like standing naked, opening up and unfolding myself. This is the inside me you don't see. The paintings shout where I can not shout and I guess reveal honesty and the darkness within, which we all struggle with at times," explains Ange (31). 

In her studio at Painswick Centre Art Studios - shared with five fellow artists - is an impressively large canvas stretching 9ft by 4ft, called Farther to Fall. It's the largest canvas Ange has made, let alone painted, and it's a catching Swedish landscape, indicating her love for this Nordic country.

"My husband's father lives out there and we try to visit at least twice a year. I tend to fill an entire sketchbook and take about 600 photographs a week. They live by a lake surrounded by trees. There's no running water, no electricity, a very simple lifestyle and it's easy to shed the baggage of life there," explains Ange, who is married to Tristan, assistant manager at Pangolin Editions in Chalford.

"This piece is called Farther to Fall because I wanted to paint something really big. I felt I was putting everything in, it was expensive to build and I was almost setting myself up for a fall. But often when you take the most risks, you get the best work. It's also a play on words, because when we visited Sweden this time we were expecting it to be in full Autumn colour, but we were a bit early," says Ange, who aims to include this in her exhibition.  But it could also open up a new door for her. Shortlisted for the prestigious Liverpool John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize in 2008, Ange hopes to try again with this giant work. 

 What's different about Ange's approach is her simple palette. Every colour blends together in a natural way. She seems to know instinctively where to put her yellow ochres and green-golds. Swatches of colours line her desk as do tiny canvas blocks with blobs of paints she intends to use.

For Ange Mullen-Bryan, it's colour first, composition second. She has a unusual condition called synesthesia, which means she feels in colour - surely an advantage for an artist, but also at times frustrating.

"If there is a colour in the room I don't normally paint - say a chair, a folder or a scarf, I have to remove it or cover it up. I find it distracting and if it doesn't go, the colour ends up in the painting," explains Ange, who also admits she can't paint her home surroundings. She has no desire to paint Cotswold landscapes, only Scandinavian ones. Yet she can't paint full Swedish landscapes in Sweden - only when she returns.

May be she needs the distance? What's clear though, when it comes to recapturing what she's seen, its colour and size that matters.

"I don't put too much pressure on the painting. I let it evolve on its own. What I would really like to do is to paint something the size of a warehouse. I generally paint as big as my space will allow. At home, my cottage is small so I paint from floor to ceiling. Here in my studio, I paint to its limit," she says.

Time will tell how big this small artist will become both in reputation and in the work she produces.

Stroud Life Article by Tracy Spiers Jan 2010