An artist born and brought up in Dorchester makes a rare return to the town in October for a new exhibition of her distinctive paintings at Gallery On The Square, Poundbury.
Bridget Syms, who now lives and works in West Cornwall, is a painter of wildlife and domestic animals whose work extends from fairly straightforward animal portraits to entirely surreal images formed from dreams or flights of fancy.
From the time she could hold a crayon drawing and animals was Bridget Syms’s obsession, and her work is driven, she says, by a fascination for animals near and far “from the motorway crows and the owls that fleetingly hover on our peripheral vision to the ones I live alongside.”

Air B&B by Bridget Syms

Some of the more fanciful images derive, she says, “from things I may have read or even dreamed. But once I get an image in my mind I just have to get it down on paper.”
Bridget’s formal training began as studio assistant to the painter Rod Hamer, where she gained the techniques and disciplines of classical drawing and painting.
A major influence is the work of the artists of the northern Renaissance, and the anonymous artists and craftsmen of the medieval period.
“I have always been fascinated by medieval drolleries, like the drawings found in illuminated manuscripts.
“And I just like painting animals,” she said.
The new exhibition of paintings by Bridget Syms is at Gallery On The Square, Poundbury, Dorchester, from
1 October to 5 November.