Charlotte Gerrard’s art career has been as vibrant, exciting, colourful and unpredictable as the natural world she so lovingly depicts in her paintings.
But when, on a whim, she picked up pastels one night in 1994 and started to draw, she had no idea that it would eventually turn into a full time career for over a quarter of a century, or that she would create hundreds of paintings and prints that would find their way into thousands of homes, or that she would work on multiple large-scale murals to brighten community spaces. After all, Charlotte had had no formal training in art growing up.
But after her first experience with art, she knew that it was what she had been born to do. After creating her first few pastel pieces – they were quite surreal, inspired by things she encountered on her travels – she put together a portfolio, walked around central London visiting likely places to exhibit her work, and sent out invites by post (this was before social media and email). Finally, she succeeded in putting together a show within the first year of her fledgling art career. It was at Neal’s Yard in Covent Garden, an iconic venue which has since spawned successful cosmetics and dairy brands. It might be unprecedented for someone with no formal training in art to have their first show so soon after picking up the pastels, but Charlotte has always been a grafter, and her entrepreneurial instincts stood her in good stead.
After travelling around Europe creating more art pieces working with soft pastels, Charlotte gradually shifted to large scale paintings – acrylic on canvas, many of them created during her travels in Australia between 1996 and 1998. Her lifelong connection with nature manifested itself in those early pieces as well, with her first UK painting exhibition – in 1998, at a restaurant in Hampstead – featuring 12 floral creations. All this was before social media, of course, so the only way to get a show or a stall or an exhibition was to speak to potential venues and organisers.
By the early 2000s, Charlotte had become a regular presence at art fairs in the UK, and she had become a full-time artist. Since that time, she has been able to make a living as an artist and support her family with her art, something she is deeply proud of. It was during the same time period that she started working on outreach community projects to beautify urban council spaces, spending 12 years as an artist-in-residence at a Camden Council Community Centre.
Community Art Projects: Mill Lane Bridge
One of her biggest projects was painting Mill Lane Bridge in 2000, in collaboration with Network rail, the council and 74 school children. The space was divided into 74 panels, each of which was worked on by a different child. The finished result – a huge mural on the side of the bridge – lasted more than two decades.
One of the children who had worked on a panel in 2000, Gemma Watson, passed away tragically soon after the project. Her panel was the only Christmas Tree on the bridge and, over time, when many of the other panels were partly covered by graffiti, hers was the only one that stayed pristine and untouched.
In 2020, the Community Centre planned to repaint the bridge in a similar manner, with a fresh set of children; after a short delay due to the pandemic, it finally happened in 2022. Every single panel except Gemma’s had the paint scraped off and was reprimed for a new painting; only hers was left intact, with the team going over the original design to touch it up. Gemma’s family came along and Charlotte got to reconnect with them, with the mural taking on new life as a touching celebration of a little girl’s life. Charlotte’s own daughter, aged 16 at the time, also helped on the restoration project.
In addition to her painting and community art work, Charlotte is also an art educator, working with children in schools on collaborative projects. Many of these reflect the central themes in her work, of her love for the natural world and raising awareness about conservation and the environment. Her school collaborations are also an opportunity for her to work with different mediums: large-scale mosaics, for example. Some of her longer associations with educational institutions have led to interesting occurrences – at one school that Charlotte has been visiting every year for more than 16 years, some students who worked on projects with her during the early days now have children of their own!
Evolution as an Artist; Art Fairs
Even though, at its core, Charlotte’s art has always been inspired by nature, it has also evolved over time. Two factors have impacted her art practice over the past few years. The first was a year-long Studio Practice course at the Newlyn School of Art. This helped her work more fluidly, while still retaining all the core elements of her practice. The second factor was spending a substantial amount of time working in India. Charlotte made a conscious choice to use only local colours and pigments, and the heat and climate made layers of wet paint dry much more quickly than they would have otherwise.
Over the course of her art career, Charlotte has gone from being a fledgling artist creating art with pastels to exhibiting her work in cafes to selling her work in high-end art fairs. She started at the Spitalfields Art Market in 2006, and continued for almost 13 years, up till the pandemic. She’s also had a stall at the Affordable Art Fair for many years. Charlotte is happy that she gets to give back as well; at an upcoming Affordable Art Fair event in Hampstead, she’s taking three new artists along, none of whom has exhibited at the fair before. Given that there are more artists today than ever before, with more competition in the art market, she knows that any help for artists who are just starting out is at a premium, and she’s happy to provide it!
These group shows at Art Fairs are dynamic and fast-moving; they typically last four or five days, with people buying pieces they like, and new pieces going up on the walls. She is fortunate in that what she loves to create is also loved by other people, but it’s also been a lot of hard work in creating revenue streams and selling art – something that’s been made easier by her entrepreneurial and interpersonal skills, but that does, at the end of the day, take up time.
As someone who’s seen the art industry change and evolve over time, Charlotte finds the preference that many fairs have for ’emerging artists’ to be illogical. After all, any given artist’s work evolves and changes over time. And removing artists from consideration because they have too much experience is entirely contrary to common sense; after all, one doesn’t ask specifically to be treated by an ’emerging dentist’ when one has a toothache.
Charlotte Gerrard: Paintings of Indian Cows
In recent years, Charlotte’s paintings of Indian cows have received a lot of attention, to the point where her art shows up on the first page of Google searches for “Indian cow paintings”. They are particularly notable for their depiction of the cows as both objects of veneration, in keeping with the millennia-long Indian tradition, and as soft, gentle mother figures.
The backgrounds of these cow portraits draw from the rich tapestry of hues that can be seen during any Indian festival; you can almost visualise heaped mounds of coloured powder during Holi in the dizzyingly bright and vibrant pinks and oranges and blues that cavort behind the central cow in each painting. The connection to India is further explored in the small touches: the ancient patterns that fill the edges of the portraits, the Devanagari writing that is added to each canvas, and the names of the cows, which usually also lend themselves to the painting titles.
One of Charlotte’s most popular cow paintings is ‘Nandi’. A white cow gazes at the viewer with soft black eyes. There is a regality about her – from the emblem on the forehead to the majestic decorated horns to the intricately patterned colourful background.
The patterns in the background of ‘Nandi’ are a journey in themselves. Many of them reflect the geometric beauty of the rangoli, an Indian art form where patterns are drawn on the ground. Other parts of the background evoke celebration and festivity, almost like a grand carpet that is only used for special occasions, or sari borders that are even more elaborate than the rest of the garment.
Charlotte recently received an order to recreate ‘Nandi’ as a fresh painting for a collector; she found that, even though the second painting looked roughly similar to the first, there were many small differences, reflecting the time that had passed since painting the original, different artistic choices, and spontaneous decisions.
Process
In ‘DO NOT SIT’ (more accurately: ‘DON OT SIT’), Charlotte brings together many of the influences on her art: her love of animals, her love of India, and the juxtaposition of paradoxical elements that are part and parcel of daily life in India.
‘DON OT SIT’ is a microcosm of a lot of Charlotte’s work; in her own words, it ‘echoes the everyday contradictions’ she’s grown to love. It is a ‘love letter to India’s paradoxes: the rule and the rebellion, the structure and the fluidity, the sacred and the ordinary.’
‘DON OT SIT’ depicts a small troop of monkeys, possibly a family unit, sitting on a pavement – or possibly the edge of a building – in front of a wall. On the wall is painted, in big letters, ‘DON OT SIT’; the blithe disregard of the instructions by the monkeys adds to the love letter to paradox in the piece as a whole, and parallels the way in which many similar injunctions on Indian walls are ignored by humans.
It was inspired by two different photographs: one of monkeys sitting on top of a wall in an old abandoned temple in Bharatpur, in the northern state of Rajasthan, India, and the other of a wall in Mumbai, paint cracked and peeling, with large red letters saying ‘DO NOT SIT’ (in theory) and ‘DON OT SIT’ (in practice).
The process of creating ‘DON OT SIT’ had many stages. Charlotte took the two photographs that would inspire the piece many months apart, and they were not initially connected to each other in any way. It was in March 2025, when she was back in England, during a sound bath meditation session, that creative inspiration struck. She decided to bring the two elements together for a painting that would encapsulate everything she loved about animals and India.
Arranging the elements in her painting took a while; she was initially going to have the monkeys sitting on top of the wall, but that would have left a lot of empty space in the lower half. After creating an ornate building edge, with echoes of the brick red and intricate patterns used in temples, she switched the positions of the monkeys to place them in front of the wall.
After the painting was done – with the wall deliberately retaining some of the kitschy imperfection of the original – Charlotte worked on adding little touches. She used crayons and pastels to add colour and texture, and added a few patterns to the painting, using a very old Indian roller that she had sourced on an earlier trip. She loves adding small details to her work; they make her art feel more alive and layered, and make collectors and viewers feel like they’re participating in an adventure, a journey, as they look closer and search for Easter eggs. In addition to the Marathi writing that translates literally to ‘Do Not Sit Here’, the word Karma is also written, in Devanagari script, towards the right side of the wall.
Themes: The Importance of Nature in Charlotte’s Work
Charlotte cannot remember a time before being an animal lover.
When she was 11 years old, she was on a farm helping feed calves. Later that day, she went out for a meal with her grandparents, and veal was on the menu. All she could think about was the calves she had seen earlier that day, carefree and happy and playful and alive. She stopped eating all meat after that experience.
Though she loves all animals, cows have a special place in her heart. Even before she started painting Indian cows, Charlotte used dairy cows in England as subjects of her art.
Every animal she paints has its own character, its own quirks, its own soul. When one looks at one of her portraits – of a bird or a small woodland creature or a cow – created with love, it is easy to imagine what the subject might be like in real life, and weave mental stories around the four- or two-legged friend that we’ve just made through the medium of a painting.
Charlotte’s messaging about the importance of animal ecosystems in nature is subtle, and works on many levels. At the face level, her subjects have incredible aesthetic beauty, and they are depicted as their own beings, with agency, with soul. At another level, the festive colours, elaborate pattern-work, and gold paint are things usually reserved for the most important portraits, and that elevates the animals in her paintings as much as anything else. Finally, elements in Charlotte’s paintings like the crown imagery in her duck screen prints highlight the importance of conservation of waterways, and use regal imagery to make a statement.
In Charlotte’s more recent work, especially that created after the Studio Practice course, her portraits of animals are looser, depicting moments in their lives. This reinforces the view that animals are not a stand-in for the human form, that they are creatures in their own right. No longer do they look intensely at the viewer; the more recent paintings are almost like one is a voyeur in a scene, like in bird watching.
The increased looseness and fluidity in Charlotte’s work has led to some interesting semi-abstract paintings, where the swaying shapes of tropical plants, like banana trees, act almost as patterns around which swirling colours coalesce, almost like the Indian landscape seen through the prism of water.
Themes: India
Charlotte has visited India numerous times, and much of her art is inspired by the animals, the colours, and the culture of the country. Her affinity for – and knowledge of – Indian culture can be seen in the little details: the twists of lemon and chillies hung beside doorways, ancient geometric patterns and rangoli designs, and Hindi words that sum up the souls of many of her paintings.
When she spends a few months in India creating art, Charlotte sources all her materials locally. From the pigments used to antique paint rollers, and the stencils she cuts out to replicate shapes she sees on the bustling streets of the country, everything plays a role in making her paintings feel like slices of India in themselves: colourful and occasionally chaotic and warm and complex and simple and alive.
A lot of Charlotte’s India-inspired art features animals – rescued cows, street dogs, monkeys, and even exotic birds like Cranes. Some of the paintings are based on chance meetings with animals, on photographs taken on a whim and transformed by her imagination. Some are the product of extended trips into nature.
For example, ‘Juveniles’ was a product of two magical moments in the wild in two countries, 5000 miles apart.
The first trip was to the Banni Grasslands Reserve in Kutch, in the western state of Gujarat, India. It was a nature safari that started at dusk, and Charlotte watched, mesmerised, as a flock of Cranes rose from the land where they had been grazing all day, and flew, shrieking, to come to rest by the lake. When they had settled down, there was total silence, and she was able to focus on the young birds in the lake, silhouetted against the thick pink light. Charlotte goes back to Banni whenever she can, and the experience is always magical.
The second trip was to the Ria Formosa National Park in Portugal, where she saw groups of juvenile flamingos feeding on fish. Charlotte put together these experiences to depict the elegance and serenity and youth of the birds, feeding in contentment against a wall of textured pink.
During her trips to India, Charlotte has come to realise how much of the colour in the country owes its origin to the women of India. From brightly coloured saris to intensely red bindis, from dazzlingly bright anklets to vividly dyed bags, women bring the colour to the world’s most populous nation. As Charlotte’s work diversifies from being all about animals, and about animals in India, to embracing new topics – women, fruit, daily life – she sees how her art celebrates women in one of her favourite places in the world, and loves it!
To better immerse herself in the culture of India, Charlotte started learning its most widely used language – Hindi – six years ago. She started by taking lessons in London, two hours every week, and kept learning by listening to language audios while taking her dog for a walk. Now that she is familiar with the language, she can communicate effectively in daily life situations, and add text to her paintings that she understands fully, leading to more authenticity.
Themes: Art for Social Good
Animal welfare is a cause very close to Charlotte’s heart. During her visits to India, she has forged partnerships with multiple local charities. For example, many of her Indian cow paintings were based on animals she met at cow sanctuaries – gaushalas – where they were rehomed after being rescued by an organisation called Tree of Life for Animals (TOLFA). Charlotte donates 10% of her profits from her cow paintings to these charities.
She also works with Animal Rescue Centre (ARC), South Goa, sharing profits from her sales with the non-profit. These partnerships help her give back to the two biggest influences on her art practice – animals and India.
Charlotte also uses her art to spread awareness about topics dear to her heart: conservation, animal rights, and the environment. This is especially powerful when she’s working with young learners who leave primary school creating art projects that celebrate the natural world. She has always found that kinesthetic learning – (for example, where children work on a huge collaborative canvas depicting the fragile polar ecosystems, and the threats that melting icebergs pose to penguins in the south and polar bears in the north) is much more effective than reading facts in a textbook.
Themes: Titles
Charlotte chooses the titles of her paintings carefully, and each of them is a part of the overall experience, along with the painting itself, the little Easter eggs added meticulously, the colours…everything has its place, it has intention.
For example, most of her Indian cow paintings have single-word titles, and it reflects the importance given to these animals in her art, and how each of them is unique, and special, and different.
Many of her bird paintings have witty titles – for example, ‘You’re Late for Supper’, from the ‘Storks at Sunset’ series, depicts a pair of storks in the middle of – possibly – a domestic argument, with Charlotte’s choice of title perfectly complementing the sheepish air of one of the storks, and the rigidity in the posture of the other. She wove a story in her head around these storks, and the dialogue she imagined led naturally to the title, one that makes sense to the viewer even without the background.
Other titles are playful, with sly puns and clever wordplay eliciting a chuckle from the viewer, and drawing them into the world of the paintings.
Looking Ahead
Charlotte’s practice continues to grow in both depth and direction. Alongside her paintings and community art projects, she is preparing to co-host a creative art and craft tour of Rajasthan early next year. The journey will wind through Jaipur, Bundi, Udaipur, and Pushkar – each a vibrant thread in the rich tapestry of India.
This tour offers a chance not just to explore the beauty of these places, but to engage with them through a creative lens. It’s a space where Charlotte’s love for India, her artistic vision, and the shared curiosity of the group can truly collide.
As she steps into this new chapter, Charlotte remains committed to art that connects – across cultures, landscapes, and lives.
Charlotte has long aspired to bring her work back to the source of its inspiration by exhibiting in India. Indian galleries interested in exploring a potential collaboration are warmly invited to get in touch.
Links
Charlotte Gerrard – Website: https://www.charlottegerrard.com/.
Charlotte Gerrard – Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/charlotte_gerrard_/.
Charlotte Gerrard – Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CharlotteGerrardPaintings.