Nonagenarian Rhoda embraces technology to produce iPad art (From Hereford Times)

Nonagenarian Rhoda embraces technology to produce iPad art

12:00am Saturday 27th October 2012 in Leisure

PRESTEIGNE-based artist Rhoda Partridge may have reached her 90s, but the spirit of adventure she brings to her art belies her years and now, having most recently experimented with bleach etching, she has embraced technology to create iPad pictures.

“About four months ago I saw an artist working on an iPad,” she says, explaining how she came to make her latest works. “I watched for a bit and then he said, ‘I’m off to get a coffee.

I’ll be about 10 minutes. You play with it’.

“I knew at once that I would have a wonderful time making images on it.” says Rhoda, “so I bought one and found a medium totally unlike anything I’d come across before.”

“Before” included running a pottery for 27 years to fund her passion for gliding, etching, which she learned when she went to Hereford art college in her 70s, and her more recent work in watercolours, oils and bleach etchings.

“Making pictures on an iPad is very frustrating. Some simple things it refuses to do at all, some difficult things it does beautifully. I find it demanding, infuriating and hugely rewarding.

“It was something of a miracle discovery.

I hadn’t been well so I hadn’t been able to do anything in my studio, which if you’re creative, can make you a bit unpleasant.”

There is one other huge advantage to making art on an iPad, as Rhoda explains: “It’s a joy not having to clear up after it.”

Rhoda’s iPad pictures can be seen at The Workhouse in Presteigne from November 1 until the end of the month.