About the Artist
Charlotte Clare Coates Dyke lives in the Tamar Valley in Cornwall.
She paints in a variety of media and enjoys changing her methods and style according to her latest inspiration.
Charlotte has moved around the U.K. working as a waitress, window dresser, tour guide, crepe chef, shop assistant and school teacher.
Charlotte was born in Kent, where she started to study Art at Maidstone College of Art and Design, in 1987/88
She then moved to Devon and studied Fine Art (painting) at Exeter College of Art and Design. She spent a term of this course in (N.C.A.D) Dublin, before completing her final year in the ceramics studio at Exeter. Charlotte completed (only just!) her degree in 1991 and then vowed to have no more to do with pretentious arty types.
She moved to Sheffield and embarked on a career in food request / delivery (waitressing)
She spent six years in Sheffield and it was there that she met the renowned Sheffield photographer/painter, Steve Withington. He inspired her to paint again and tentatively, Charlotte re-launched her painting career on a small and experimental scale, mainly attending life classes at the Mappin Gallery, and painting portraits and still life.
After spending a year in Scarborough, training to be a teacher, Charlotte moved back South, to Hertfordshire. At first, living on a dull housing estate in Hemel Hempstead, she lost all inspiration, but slowly and surely, she began to paint again, when she moved to Codicote, a village set in the undulating landscape of central Hertfordshire. It was here that she met Jane Vincent, the curator of Royston Museum and Gallery. Charlotte painted and exhibited over 15 paintings at the Gallery in 1998.
Charlotte also wrote and illustrated a childrens' book at this time, and one of her paintings came runner up in A&I Garden Painting Competition.She didn't win the holiday in France, but she did win a sketch book!
In 2002, Charlotte, Stuart and their baby daughter Isabelle moved again to Barton-Le-Clay in Bedfordshire. Charlotte worked in Bedford, but she was inspired greatly, by the beautiful Chilterns and walked in the Barton Hills almost on a daily basis.
Charlotte joined the "Mid Beds Art Society," and exhibited her water colours with them on several occasions in Milton Keynes, Marston Mortaine Forestry Centre and Barton Le Clay Church. Yet Charlotte felt strangely out of place and ostracised by the group, so she ceased to exhibit with them in 2003.She did continue to show her work at Eben Fine Art in Barton and also at The Rather Nice Company, Markyate.
In 2004/5 Charlotte and her family moved to Harrowbarrow in Cornwall. She is thoroughly enjoying the huge range of artistic opportunities there are in the region and is currently working on increasingly large scale paintings of Bodmin Moor and Tors.