PARSONS, Jenny

1944 - ?

As Jennifer E. M. Garrett, she was born at Meriden, Warwickshire in 1944, daughter of Charles Edward John Watson Garrett (3 May 1908-4 March 1995), who was born at Beccles, Suffolk, and his wife Sarah E. Healey, who married at Birmingham in 1940. Jenny studied ceramics at Birmingham School of Art 1953-1963, and at Manchester School of Art 1963-1965 for her Fine Art-Post Graduate Teaching Diploma. She met her husband David Parsons at art school and they married in 1964, and both became teachers. Jenny worked in secondary education for some years and became an Arts Advisory Teacher for the Inner London Education Authority and later an Ofsted Inspector for Education and, after taking early retirement, set up home at Béziers in Languedoc, southern France, but around 2010 decided to return home to The Laburnums, Hoxne Road, Eye, Suffolk. Jenny is a landscape artist and the decision to leave their large French house with two separate art studios was a difficult decision, having owned their French home for some 30 years and living there full-time for 10 years. However, at Eye they were able to turn existing outbuildings into separate studio space where they paint during the day. At Eye, Jenny, who loves painting flowers, there was a space for a garden in which all manner of interesting plants could be cultivated. Their garden was created by their son Sam and his partner Annie who are Chelsea silver medal-winning landscape designers. Jenny creates lush, vibrant, colourful pictures which are highly detailed and juxtapose the texture, colour, and look of the plants which make up her garden. Jenny and David had their first joint exhibition at Wingfield Barns in Suffolk, and they exhibited regularly at the John Russell Gallery in Ipswich also exhibited at Gallerie Mercure, Beziérs, France and elsewhere. Her work is to be found in private collections in the U.K, France, and the U.S.A.

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Works by This Artist