Sarah Bradford - Winner of the 2010 Dover Art prize.

As with all my work, these paintings are inspired by and are a reflection of my surroundings. We moved to Northumberland from Wales in June 2007 after over thirty years of holidaying there; a week or two annually usually in October.

Earlier work, though essentially to do with the locality of Monmouthshire, certainly signaled my attachment to the north but it was limited. A single week being a tourist does not do it. We have now experienced an entire year with all the nuances of weather, the seasons, the changing face of the agricultural scene and that particular light that is the north east. It has been full of surprises and it really does catch my breath.

The bleached post harvest landscape, soft borderland mists, the feminine contours of the coastal plain, the bronzed purple autumn of open moorland, birch woods, estuaries, sand dunes and the ever present Cheviots marking the boundary in the distance are all referred to in the colours, forms, surfaces, textures and atmosphere of these works. I am absorbed in précising a landscape through painterly equivalents to evoke my sense of place.