About Neil Pettie

After a successful career in financial services, I took early retirement in 2000 and returned to painting which I'd neglected for many years. Early on I signed up for an in depth painting course with the Open College of Art (OCA) which helped me realise that the main driver for my need to paint was and always would be my love of the landscape and nature in general At that time I was living in Edinburgh and during that period I managed to exhibit and sell in such far flung places as Edinburgh, Glasgow, the Lothians, Fife, Inverness and Rome. I also had the distinction of exhibiting and selling a work in the prestigious Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. I was also a regular contributor at the equally prestigious MacMillan exhibitions in Edinburgh and always sold well In 2008 I moved to Deal on the Kent coast and joined a wonderful organisation called SEAS (South East Artists) and with their help have regularly exhibited and sold works locally while continuing to sell in Edinburgh – and a one-off in Cyprus! Since moving to the coast, I have, not surprisingly, become much more interested in seascapes which somehow have nudged me more and more into abstraction but still loosely based on nature which I am enjoying immensely.