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Jill Carrott is well known for her colourful, creative and complicated knitting designs. Of course you won´t have heard of her as her work was sold through a studio, but you will have heard of the businesses that bought them, M & S, Next, Gap, Mothercare, Ralph Lauren, Missoni as well as many independent producers all over the world. She spent over 30 years working in textiles, writing patterns that were published in magazines, producing kits, collaborating on books as well as individual commissions.

She moved to Nerja from London in 1992 with her husband and 3 daughters, joining her parents who had lived in Spain since the mid 1970´s. In the early years she drew pen drawings of her surroundings which were sold to all and sundry by her Dad and also undertook house portraits. She then became interested in "Still Life" paintings using watercolour and gouache. She took part in an exhibition in Velez-Málaga with other artists of the Axarquia which led to many commissions from hotels and restaurants in the area. At that time she considered the idea of knitting a Van Gogh and in fact knitted 2 cardigans, which led on to painting the local landscape in the style of Van Gogh that became a sellout exhibition.

4 years ago arthritis set in in her hands and it was far too painful to knit. Luckily, at that time , she came across the Torrox School of Fine Art and has been a regular attendee ever since. The idea was to recover her lost or forgotten life drawing skills from 45 years ago, she now feels she has almost done that and is trying to move forward into more contemporary work. She has exhibited in 2 exhibitions with the Torrox School.

Jill´s drawings are mainly in charcoal or pastel, rarely pencil. She mainly works in acrylic paint on canvas or board. One of her processes uses lots of texture and multiple layers of colour then scratching and scraping away at the surface to reveal what lies beneath, before adding more colour and possibly metal foils.

Jill is in a period of exploration of form and colour as well as texture, with several themes running side by side. She is drawn to the human figure, be it clothed or nude. However she has begun to investigate abstraction. She still has a lot to discover and every day looks forward to creating.....