In 1980 Mathé Shepheard returned to university as a mature student, graduating with a first-class degree in ceramics and glass. In the 1980s she sold her work and designs to companies. After an invitation to lecture on Stained Glass, she returned to teaching.
A study visit to Japan has proved a source of inspiration ever since. After Mathé retired, she began painting. She enjoys the fluidity, the variation of tone and the unexpected in watercolour. Inks are more expressive and unalterable. She paints flowers, individually and in groups, trees which can be near-realistic or semi-abstract.
Other aspects of her work derive from landscape, sky and water which respond well to a free combination of both. Mathé likes her work to generate a sense of déjà vu as well as of the unexpected and the hidden.
Ink medium provides the support, guiding the eye and creating a structure, allowing the watercolour to play its role in colour and depth. Inks are expressive, unalterable, and almost unforgiving. Watercolour responds to the painter more gently, providing harmony and hidden riches. The results can be fluid and easy to read or intense and concentrated.
