Successful British landscape artist who enjoys painting the Fens and the Flow Country
As the eldest son of one of the country’s most colourful and outspoken journalists of the day Richard Ingrams, (of Private Eye fame) Fred Ingrams’ childhood was never dull. He grew up in rural Berkshire, was educated at a Catholic boy’s boarding school and then headed off to London where he studied both at Camberwell College of Arts and St Martin’s School of Art. He left the former for refusing to use oil paints and was expelled from the latter as a ‘disruptive influence’. Renting a studio above the Coach & Horses pub, Fred Ingrams could regularly be found drinking at the infamous Colony Room Club, alongside the feted litterati and artistic milieu of the day, which included the likes Francis Bacon, Damian Hirst and other irascibles. Bacon became a regular drinking partner and, against Bacon’s usual credo “of owning virtually nothing”, bought one of Ingrams’ large oils.
The Fens are perhaps the least loved landscape in Britain. For some reason the flatness of this huge area of Eastern England does not capture the heart. It is a landscape that does not fit into the ideal of a rolling “green and pleasant land”. They are, on the other hand as flat as a billiard table and to most people, featureless and grim. It is an industrial landscape reclaimed from the sea by Vermuyden and Bedford filled with rows of regimented crops growing in the black soil. The wind blows from from the east and is cold and nagging. The people who live there appear, like the wind, cold and unfriendly. It is for all these reasons I feel so at home painting in the Fens.
Most of Britain’s rural landscape has been forged over time by farmers and is a totally unnatural manufactured facade. This is even more true in the Fens. Almost every inch has been fought for and is still being drained today via hundreds of miles of ditches, drains and rivers that crisscross the land. The constant draining and erosion caused by the wind and the soil oxidizing means the land is sinking and will one day be surely reclaimed once again by the sea. It is a landscape that feels fragile and brittle that hovers between over-draining and flooding, in between the sky and the sea.
"As I sit and paint here, I am always struck by how few people inhabit this place. I am nearly always alone. The only sounds are distant tractors, the calls of lapwings, warblers and the cry of Marsh Harriers. It seems that peoples fear of flatness keeps the Fens empty. Flatness also changes everything when you look into the distance. Distances becomes hard to judge and perspective seems altered from the normal, making it like no other place in Britain. It is this flatness that protects the Fens and makes it one of the best kept secrets of our landscape. It is place full of strange stories, myths, strange place names and strange people. It is a landscape that is on the outside of a world that exists beyond the horizon."
Selected Exhibitions
2019 One man show - Edge of Landscape - Nick Holmes Fine Art, Iris Studios, London
2018 One man show - A Year in the Fens - Lynne Strover at Stapleford Granary, Cambridge
2018 One man show - New Paintings - On Paved Court Gallery, Richmond, London
2017 One man show - New Paintings - Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge
2016 One man show - Ditch - Art Bermondsey Project Space, London
2016 One man show - Lat Earth - Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge
2015 One man show - Vanishing Lines - Art Bermondsey, London
2011 Group show – Group Eight, 18|21 Gallery, Norwich, Norfolk
2011 Inspirations 2011 – Group show, Norwich
2010 Group show – Art in the Park, Norfolk
2009 Group show – Hampshire Art Fair
