Dr Angela Summerfield is a contemporary landscape painter, Courtauld-trained art historian and curator. Angela studied Fine Art at the University of Leeds. She was awarded a British Academy scholarship, for her PhD on the formation of our public collections of 20th-century British art. As a curator, she has worked for leading UK institutions, such as the Walker Art Gallery, and most recently as a Senior Curator, Royal Academy of Arts. She is an elected member of AICA, and now writes catalogue essays and contributes book chapters which focus on landscape art: e.g. ‘Why do artists paint trees?’ [historical and contemporary British and International Art] in ‘The Arborealists: The Art of the Tree’ (Sansom & Company, ISBN9781908326867, 2016); and ‘Green Truth: the forest as a unique creative space,’ in ‘Evolving the Forest’ (artdotearth publishing, ISBN 978-0-9957196-3-7, 2021). In 2018 Angela was invited by the Canwood Art Foundation to curate the contemporary art exhibition, ‘EMPATHY,’ which explored our special relationship with Nature within a historical context: Angela wrote the catalogue essay for ‘EMPATHY,’ Canwood Gallery (ISBN 9781527227538). In 2021 she curated the exhibition ‘Experience of Wonder: Wonderment,’ for the London gallery, NoonPowell Fine Art. Angela is currently writing the book ‘Visceral Landscaping,’ which combines a study of historical landscape painting with her own contemporary art practice and Nature Writing.
Angela is an elected member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics, UK Section); invited member of Space Place Practice: a UK artists’ research collective, based at Bath Spa University; and an active member of the British Art Network Landscape Research Group.
