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'My people aren't exactly realistic. It's something to do with the way I try to show a sense of heightened emotion.' Angela Barrett was born in Essex. She left school at 15 and although her parents did not really want her to go at first, she spent eight years at art school. She was awarded an MA at the Royal College of Art where she was taught by Quentin Blake.
After leaving college she began to design work for a number of commercial enterprises, including book covers for several publishers. Her illustrations have appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine, The Observer Magazine and House and Garden. Her highly collectable work has been regularly exhibited in the UK and abroad.
Angela Barrett’s first book, The King, the Cat and the Fiddle (1983), was written by Sir Yehudi Menuhin and Christopher Hope. Since then she has illustrated numerous books for adults and children and designed book covers for over 30 titles. She was a category winner of the 1988 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize for Can It Be True? Her book The Hidden House won the 1991 W. H. Smith Illustration Award. Her books are exquisitely drawn and painted in an almost Pre-Raphaelite style.
About her work'I’ve got two sorts of drawing. I draw passionately all over paper tablecloths, napkins and backs of envelopes. But drawings like that are difficult to convert into anything useful. Sketch books are different, important to me. So I can jot down ideas on the spur of the moment that probably wouldn’t come back to me otherwise – dreams, and other things that pass fleetingly through my mind.'
'I use a camera quite a lot, for composition, but not for people. Once I've got the drawings and composition more or less plotted out, I stick it to the window with masking tape (I haven't got a light box) and then I trace it all off on to beautiful handmade watercolour paper. Then, having made any last-minute alterations, I draw the whole thing with great precision in pencil, before setting to work with a mixture of watercolour, gouache and coloured pencils.'
'I don't use models, but I frequently draw myself in the mirror. If you look at Joan of Arc, that's me, imagining what it's like to be burnt at the stake.'
1983 The King, the Cat and the Fiddle (Yehudi Menuhin and Christopher Hope)
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