Philippa JV Futrell

Futrell paints with a quiet attentiveness to light, holding the wild edges of landscape in a state between observation and abstraction. Working in water-based media, she builds atmospheric surfaces where colour and texture carry the mood—coastline, waterways, and weather rendered as memory as much as place.

Time and Tide 2025 - Acrylic and marble dust on paper cradle mounted: 25 x 25cm

Walled isolation 2025 - Acrylic on paper:
29 x 35cm — Walled isolation 2025 - Acrylic on paper: 29 x 35cm

Distant dynamic views 2025 - Acrylic on paper: 37.5 x 56cm

Flooding memories 2025 - Acrylic and marble dust on paper cradle mounted: 25 x 25cm

Bathed in frozen time 2025 - Acrylic and marble dust on paper: 33 x 56cm

From the Atelier Collection

- Philippa JV Futrell

Biography

Capturing atmosphere and evoking mood sit at the centre of Philippa Futrell’s practice. After graduating with a BA in Graphic Design from Middlesex in 1987, she worked as a freelance designer before moving into Fine Art education. Her career at Benenden School culminated in Head of Department in 2015; in 2022 she retired to refocus on her own studio work, relaunching her practice in 2024 from Dixter Road.

Based in East Sussex, Futrell is drawn to the quiet wild edges of the landscape—narrow corridors of growth and erosion where the natural world presses against the made. Light, colour, and surface texture drive her compositions, often returning to waterways: the East Sussex coastline and its weathered structures, and the tumbling, jewel-like light of the Lake District.

Selected exhibitions: Rye Arts Society; Star Brewery Gallery; Sussex Contemporary; Cranbrook Art Show; Mall Galleries (RI Water Colours).

Futrell works primarily in water-based media—most often acrylic—on watercolour paper, using flat brushes to push the boundary between realism and abstraction. Manufactured pigments are treated as a field for discovery, alongside experiments with found and natural materials: iron filings, marble dust, Indian ink, and occasionally natural pigments within mixed-media pieces.

Photography from walks acts as an aide-mémoire, allowing the work to shift from observation into a more personal studio reality. Alongside this, she is developing a plein air practice, beginning drawings in Indian ink—sometimes using found materials as brushes—before returning to the work in colour.