Fiona Carver is a painter from Rutland, England’s smallest county. She trained at Edinburgh College of Art graduating with a BA (hons) in Furniture Design before moving to London where she worked as a gallery and exhibition manager. Working with artists and painters inspired her own work and when she returned to live in Rutland she began painting again. She now creates observational oil paintings from life, both ‘en plein air’ and in her studio.
Drawn mainly to domestic still lifes, she is inspired by the objects she has around her, their colour and shape and the relationship between these items in the set up. Her low-key palette gives the paintings a quiet, intimate quality, leaving the observer with a sense of gentle calm.
When the conditions are just right she paints outside ‘en plein air’, either in her local surroundings or further afield on painting trips to the coast. It is a much faster, more instinctive way of working and a nice contrast to the more measured studio work.
She has exhibited with the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and been shortlisted for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. She has won the Daler-Rowney award at The Artist and Leisure Painter Exhibition in both 2025 and 2024. Her work has been included in a number of print making books and has appeared on the cover of Country Living Magazine.