Bella Bigsby spent many years living and exhibiting in California before returning home to Norfolk – a landscape that continues to shape both her life and her art.

She draws inspiration from the wild and quiet places of her surroundings, painting animals and birds that are as rich in symbolism as they are in natural beauty. Her work is a deeply personal expression of nostalgia, connection, and reverence for nature.

“I am interested in the details of things, their textures, in how the place where you grow up shapes the person you are. It becomes an internalised landscape, like the shape of a familiar tree.”

Her influences range from the magical realism of “Golden Age” illustrators like Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham to traditional East Asian landscape painting, where balance and stillness give form to emotion and meaning.

“These moments move me to paint, to describe something that is beyond words.”