Living and working in Lockerbie in Dumfriesshire, artist Bella Green hails from Glasgow, and is one of the key artists at this year’s Borders Art Fair. Before becoming a full-time painter, Bella completed a two-year foundation course at Harrow School of Art, going on to gain a degree in Painting at Norwich School of Art, followed by art teacher training at Leicester University, after which she combined painting with teaching in a variety of schools and colleges, and for years was a visiting lecturer in colour and drawing at the Royal College of Art in London. She runs an annual two-week painting workshop at the Centro d’Arte Verrocchio in Tuscany, and over 20 years has shown her work at Spring Fling – Dumfries and Galloway’s Open Studio event, and exhibited widely in the UK. She was elected a member of Visual Art Scotland in 2003 and is the Honorary President of Dumfries and Galloway Fine Arts Society (DAGFAS)
Inspired by observation, imagination and dreams, still life has become her primary subject matter – objects in her home and studio, usually with memories of people and places providing her main starting points, with flowers also a constant source of beauty and beginnings, combined with outside views of places she has been, or longs to be.
Bella likes to make playful interpretations of everyday things, using imagination and composition to create possible narratives, taking joy in colour and in paint, which, along interaction with her media her main expressive elements, touching on the Romantic spirit in art, creating works for longer contemplation, and evoking feelings and memories in the viewer, and encourage them to ponder and resonate more deeply with their own inner sources of meaning.
At Borders Art Fair 2025 Bella will exhibit paintings in ois, acrylic and watercolour, including a series of small observed still-life and landscape studies – part of the preparation for larger compositions – and larger, more integrated works, bringing together individual objects with landscape and allow her to play with different degrees of visual representation.
Taking place over three days in March, the Borders Art Fair returns to the Borders Events Centre in the picturesque market town of Kelso, showcasing work from individual artists, galleries and collectives from all over the UK at over seventy stands, and offering a chance for visitors to meet artists, have a go at creating their own masterpieces at workshops with leading artist, and be inspired watching its select group of Artists at Work. The Fair’s website has a full colourful programme for the weekend.
