About Me
I’m Ione Harrison, a British landscape artist and watercolour tutor based in North Yorkshire. My contemporary paintings are inspired by wild northern landscapes, exploring atmosphere, light and emotion to create a strong sense of place through expressive watercolour.
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Working primarily in watercolour and mixed media, I’m drawn to the shifting skies, open moorland and coastal edges of the North. My aim is not simply to record a landscape, but to capture its mood — the quiet drama, space and stillness that make these places so compelling.
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Teaching & Studio Practice
Alongside my painting practice, I run small-group watercolour workshops in North Yorkshire, welcoming both beginners and experienced painters. With over 30 years of teaching experience, I create a supportive and encouraging environment where students can develop confidence, freedom and a more personal, expressive approach to watercolour.
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Biography
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Working from her studio in Hovingham, North Yorkshire, British landscape artist Ione Harrison creates vibrant, atmospheric watercolour paintings inspired by landscape and the natural world. Her work explores texture, movement and emotion through expressive mark-making and experimental techniques, including wax resist and the incorporation of textiles and plant materials.
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Ione studied at Oxford Brookes University, the University of Bath and Bath Spa University. While she built a long professional career in teaching, painting has remained central to her creative life. Years of international teaching and travel — including time in France, the Middle East, Turkey and Nepal — deepened her sensitivity to landscape and colour, influencing the luminous, heat-infused palettes that continue to inform her work.
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Now based once again in North Yorkshire, she finds renewed inspiration in the expansive skies, open moorland and shifting light of northern England.
Her work has been exhibited widely and she has been represented by galleries in Helmsley, Leeds, Malton and York.
Artist Statement
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Working primarily in watercolour and ink, my practice is inspired by the natural world and the shifting light and mood of moorland, woodland, hill and coastline. Rather than seeking literal representation, I aim to evoke atmosphere and emotional resonance — capturing the felt experience of landscape.
With a semi-abstract, expressionistic approach, I often work in colours held in a minor key, punctuated by moments of inky intensity. Through layered mark-making, texture and pattern, I explore memory, nostalgia and a strong sense of place — revealing something quieter and more elemental beneath the surface of the land.
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My work draws on both my childhood in North Yorkshire and years of travelling and teaching internationally. The heat-soaked palettes of the Middle East and Asia continue to inform my use of colour, bringing warmth and luminosity to my interpretations of northern landscapes.
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I am drawn to the solitude and elemental presence of wild places — earth, sea and sky — and to the quiet sense of the sacred they hold. Through watercolour, I translate landform and atmosphere into fluid, expressive paintings that invite contemplation and connection.
