Jean Hobson is a watercolourist who uses the medium in an unusally bold and vibrant way which comes from a passionate desire to make a positive statement about the people in her paintings. Her paintings reflect this interest in people - how they see themselves and how they relate to each other.

Jean was born in Wallasey in 1947 and studied at Liverpool College of Art in the 1960s before moving to Scarborough. There she taught and ran a small hotel overlooking the harbour while bringing up her two daughters, who have now left home. She became renowned as a vegetarian chef (she worked with Sarah Brown) and played accordion with local blues bands.


Now living in Glossop in Derbyshire, she moved to the Peak District in 1992 to concentrate full-time on her painting, attracted by the dramatic landscape and the earthy vitality of the area. She has a studio and workshop above the former Co-op stables in Oak Street, Glossop. Jean strongly believes that art should be affordable to everyone and always makes a point of including reproductions of her work in exhibitions.

Jean has been selling her work since she was a student and in the six years since she became a full-time painter has exhibited widely across the north of England and in London, Ireland, the Isle of Man and Wales. She is showing at Scarborough Art Gallery from March 23 - April 11, 1998.

Art critic and jazz singer George Melly says of her paintings: "They capture the spontaneity and enthusiasm of those who live through their instincts rather than through abstract speculation."