My Work

"Zennor Box's work are intriguing images caught in time, like opening a book at a random page, they capture a story in mid flow, something's just happened or is about to happen but you're not quite sure what. It's up to us to imagine the story either side of the image."

I paint my paintings in the hope that they are instantly engaging, for them to be easy to look at and undemanding, but once it’s got your attention and you feel safe looking at it, I like you to get something extra, something you’re not expecting. This could be humorous, but I much prefer it if it’s odd, and it's even better if it's both. It’s often a struggle to get the balance right between odd and amusing, too odd and it’s uneasy and overwhelming, not odd enough and it’s too sweet and cute with no substance.

I am inspired by so many things from Conversations to Artists from Walks to Films. The list is constantly growing but here are a few people who have really helped me on the way.
  

Paula Rego taught at my Art college, though I never met her, her work inspired me and my work profoundly. I love her early paintings where animals are in odd narrative worlds, she allows you to have sympathy for their plight in a way that's free from the cuteness that's intrenched in today's popular culture.
  

Michael Sowa like Paula Rego paints narrative images with animals but instead of being sinister they’re a mixture between Larson and Edward Hopper, they are funny and beautiful. The Art World have always belittled work that's humorous and yet here is a painter using light and colour to deliver exquisite images that make you laugh.
  

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese film director and two of his Animated films I adore,  ‘Totoro’ and ‘Spirited Away.’
They are masterpieces! beautiful, odd and spiritual. You get a sense of his ancient cultural heritage which is so old and profound. He understands his characters have many sides to them and he treats them with humility dignity and compassion.
 

_{More Heroes;
Edward Hopper, Henri Rousseau, Gainsbrough, Sicket, Whistler, Hieronymus Bosch, Chagall, Paul Henry, Stubbs, Vemeer, Max Earnst, Henry Lautrec, Magrette, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Miro(sculpture), Turner. Tamara De Lempicka, Edward Hicks, Honore Daumier. Grant Wood (American Gothic) Rothco, Lyonel Feininger (The White Man), George Bellows, Whistler, Stanley Spencer, Lucian Freud, Pierre Bonnard, O Winston Link (photographed Trains)}

My History

Born Anna Witney and three months old my parents immigrated in 1965 on a £10 ticket from England  to Australia. The Airplane was crowded with families doing the same thing, on the search for an adventure or better way of life. My dad made and mended fences on farms in the out back of Eastern Australia, where I was able to run free and explore with my brother Jason.

We were there for four years until my parent’s marriage broke down, I was then crudely awaken from my wild beginning and brought back to England, where I had to be tamed into a conventional primary school in Lyndhurst in the New Forest.

It took years to settle, living in a wooden flat and being the only family in the school with divorced parents compounded things. My Mum (Greta Berlin also an Artist), brother and I were teased and jeered at for looking like gypsies, until my brother told one child quietly that mum would turn them all to stone if they didn't stop giving us grief. This news rushed quickly round the families and the teasing stopped.

I changed my name after many years of my Mum calling me Zennor. I gained this nickname after playing on my Granddads (Sven Berlin another Artist) typewriter at the age of five and completely miss spelling my name. It was cemented when we travelled down to St Ives for a family holiday. Zennor is the next village down from St Ives and in the village there's a myth about a mermaid who fell in love with a local fisherman, so when I’d finished playing on the beach and my long skirt was soaking wet, it was only natural for my mum (who had been born and brought up in St Ives in the 1940’s and 50’s) to call me Zennor.

Following what seemed to be a family trait, I left Hounsdown secondary school with low grade CSE's and an O’level in Art. Knowing I wasn’t stupid but recognising that the English system wasn’t helping me, my mum found out about a school in Switzerland called Ecole d' Humanité. I spent two summers running a Bed and Breakfast business in my dad’s house to raise enough money to pay for the school. (He meanwhile had to sleep in the Chicken House on Wheels in his field.)

The Ecole gave me a very valuable year, gaining the confidence I badly needed, I came back to England and with my mums help and the new resolve and determination I planned to go to Art College.

Hill College in Southampton, I managed to get the o' levels and Art A' Level to go to Art Collage.

Winchester Art Collage I did my Foundation.

West Surrey College of Art & Design I did a BA Hons degree. 

University of South Glamorgan my MA.

It was however getting a job as a runner at Aardman Animations that changed my life forever. Apart from falling in love, I felt for the very first time that I was in a place where I really belonged. It was fantastically creative and inventive, and it wasn't long before I knew everyone in the company, all forty of them and I went from being a Runner to being a Model Maker and I worked on films such as 'A Close Shave', 'Rex the Runt' (Pilot), various adverts and later The Spice Girls pop promo 'Viva Forever'. 

In 1996 and seven months pregnant I married the person I had fallen in love with Steve Box. I made a green velvet dress to accentuate my pregnancy, I wish I had thought of it then, but I should have made it like the Arnolfini Wedding dress.

After my second son, and a lot of encouragement from a close friend I started painting again. As well as painting for myself, I painted concept pictures for the Wallace and Gromit Feature Film 'Curse of the Wear Rabbit', and made some little Rabbits in the model making dept, but the times had changed. It was six years since I had been making models and it was now a huge company employing over 200 people, and it was hard to feel special in the way we all did in the early days.

So I went back to painting for myself, and as you can see, this has grown into a greeting card and print business. I’ve also recently written and illustrated a children’s book, 'The Easter Deal'. It was inspired by the painting I did 'Easter Deal', and fingers crossed, it might be published next year.

I hope you enjoy looking at my paintings.