Zue Acker started her artistic career as a ceramic artist in Oxford England working from Beard Mill over the River Windrush. She attended Bath Academy of Art in the 80’s to take her BA in Ceramics and Printmaking. After 6 years in the ceramic business she packed up shop to travel. Feeling a need to fill the creative void she took up sketching, watercolours, pastels and charcoal; after many years finally arriving at oil painting. “For so many years I have been looking at all the colours surrounding us in nature and imagining them on canvases. Without fail, every time I was in a wood or forest I felt such a longing to capture those colours and the magical atmosphere I felt. I started painting in oils as I felt they would give me the greatest colour and texture flexibility. I painted my first canvas in 2004 and was immediately taken. Every painting is an experiment or an exploration of the material. The one common thread is my colour lust and the desire I have to convey the world as it seems to me; full of awe, wonder and depth beyond our comprehension.” I would like my paintings to make the viewer feel like they really are in the forest, where they can hear the water dripping or sense that stillness and presence of an ancient tree. Essentially I hope the paintings convey an atmosphere through my use of colour.” Zue has spent much of her life between Oxford UK and San Francisco California. She is drawn to paint her immediate surroundings and inspired by travelling through places such as San Pancho, (San Francisco) Mexico and Gerona, Catalunya. Her studio is presently located in the Mission district in San Francisco at a thriving community arts co-operative, Cellspace.(link cellspace.org) “I have been inspired by a huge variety of artists such as local San Franciscan artists: Gage Opdenbrouw, John Gruenwald, John Melvin and Michelle Muldrow, a little-known Victorian genius, Samuel Palmer (exhibited in the Ashmolean Oxford ), Tim Deibler, a Colorado painter, John Singer Sargent, and Wolf Khan.”