Tamsin Abbott is a stained glass artist who lives in rural east Herefordshire with her husband and their two children. She completed a degree in English literature at Stirling University, Scotland specializing in medieval literature. Her love of the language and stories of medieval literature was enhanced by the fact that much of the research material she was reading was illustrated with paintings and simple woodcuts of the period.
When she moved to Herefordshire, after leaving university, she studied at Gloucester College of Art and Technology where she discovered the work of the Brotherhood of Ruralists which became a great influence in her art. In 1999, she began a class to learn stained glass at Hereford College of Art and Design and soon gained an Open College Network (OCN) in the craft.
Tamsin now makes these stunning pieces of stained glass from her studio in the Herefordshire countryside inspired by the orchards, the hills, the woods, the owls, the birds and other animals.
She says ” When I painted my first hare a few years ago I had no idea of the connection I was making and the relationship I was forming! So many people are drawn to the it and I am often asked why so much of my work is about them. I think it could be because the hare embodies all those aspects of nature that we want to believe in, that it is wild, clever, bold and free. However, the hare has also long been associated with many myths and folklore, witchcraft and shape-shifters and in a way represents the female spirit of nature just as the green man represents the male energy of nature. I think that we all have a need or desire for a spiritual connection and yet we have become alienated from the major religions of the world and somehow the hare sparks something off in peoples’ minds.”
