There is a certain alchemy in the way Angie Spencer wields her brush. Not merely as a tool, but as a conduit — a bridge between what is seen, what is felt, and what is heard. Ahead of her exhibition WATER WAYS at Aleph Contemporary this July, I visited her at home in Stroud and found myself drawn into her world — one where rivers whisper, seascapes breathe, and music stirs the pigment.
Spencer is not an artist who stands at a distance. Her process is fully immersive, often painting outdoors — en plein air — where the light can shift with a sigh and the river's mood can rewrite a morning. Her studio, nestled in the Stroud valley within a red-brick sanctuary humming with the scent of oil and the residue of melody, holds the echoes of a lifetime’s devotion to both visual and musical languages.
A trained classical violinist and a graduate in Fine Art Printmaking from the University of Gloucestershire, Spencer’s journey from the linear precision of print to the fluidity of oil painting mirrors her increasing need to respond not just to sight, but to sound, to sensation, to movement. She has said herself: “I paint best when I am immersed in the landscape that I am painting.” And it shows. Her canvases hum with life.
The forthcoming WATER WAYS exhibition is, in many ways, a summation of this philosophy. Water — be it the sea, the river, the garden pond or lake — is the lifeblood of the work. And yet, this is no idle theme. Each painting is a choreography of rhythms carefully observed and interpreted. Spencer often speaks of standing beside a river, pausing, closing her eyes, attuning herself to the pulse of the current before laying anything down in paint. This meditative method prevents the chaos of conflicting water patterns from disrupting the illusion. It is a painter’s mindfulness. It is craft.
Take her seascapes, born from a 10-day residency along the Ring of Kerry. Forty oil sketches were completed — some under torrential rain, others in mist-draped silence — all evidence of an artist dancing with the elements. Back in the studio, these sketches evolve into large-scale paintings, often soundtracked by Sibelius or ambient compositions by Andrew Heath. As Spencer remarks, music changes her approach to the brush: it softens, sharpens, or expands her gestures, altering the entire character of the painting.
In one evocative work titled The River in May, we find irises pulsing with quiet intensity along the River Frome, where she has conducted a year-long visual pilgrimage. Others focus on the more industrial, less picturesque aspects of Stroud’s waterways — scenes shortlisted for Jackson’s Painting Prize — showing Spencer’s refusal to idealise at the cost of honesty.
Another chapter in her story unfolds through her residency at Painswick Rococo Garden, a more formal and structured terrain that challenged her wild-seeking sensibilities. These works, though, provided an important counterpoint, revealing that ordered beauty also demands attention, curiosity, and a fresh kind of patience.
A conversation with Spencer — as I discovered in her studio — meanders like her beloved river. We discussed Turner and Constable (she prefers Constable), oil pigment suppliers, weather patterns, violins, Tolstoy, and the challenge of pricing one's work in a time when "ordinary people just aren’t buying art.” And yet, there is no bitterness. Just a resilient tenderness. She paints for the same reason she swims in cold rivers and leads the Stroud Symphony Orchestra: because it brings her close to something essential and untranslatable.
In a world too often enamored with instant clarity, Angie Spencer’s art insists on something slower, richer, more lived-in. Her work doesn’t shout — it resonates. It lingers like a melody half-remembered, or the light on water when you’re not quite sure where the current is headed but you trust it nonetheless.
If you can, walk quietly into WATER WAYS this July. Let the paintings speak their fluid language. And perhaps, like Spencer, you too will hear the music beneath the surface.
