Hazel Soan was born in England in 1954 and trained at the Camberwell School of Art and at Leicester College of Art, graduating in 1976. Since that time she has built up for herself an awe-inspiring list of one-man and mixed shows from London to Birmingham, Surrey to Nottingham, Venezuela to Zimbabwe and Tokyo. Hazel Soan enjoys the freedom that her painting gives her. Having learnt to fly a single-engine aircraft, she is able to visit many countries around the world sketching avidly as she goes. She also learnt to sail and bought a half share in a yacht as well as a share in a Landrover in which she can set off on safari to explore the desert coasts of Africa.
Her work is a mixture of the exotic and the ordinary. Elephants at a waterhole or the Landrover in the Okavango swamps hang alongside water-colours of the remnants of tea, or coffee, or a croissant. Her work has a vibrancy which relies on a sparklingly clean use of water-colour and a flawless technique. Sue Reynold of the Observer has said of her: "For me the essential Hazel Soan is her talent, like the miller's daughter turning flax into gold, for making the apparently simple into the truly special." Hazel says: "If I could wish for anything from and for my paintings, it is that the pleasure and excitement I receive from seeing my subjects would be similarly experienced by those who later view my paintings."
Her work is held in private and public collections in England, Australia, the USA, Venezuela, Africa, Japan, France and Spain. She has also received national media coverage on many television shows and has presented her own series of programmes on the way in which to paint in water-colour for Anglia TV, which was shown across the UK’s ITV network.
