Biography

Tina Lawlor Mottram

07722 007566 / serpentina@blueyonder.co.uk

After graduating initially from Limerick College of Art and Design, I received a postgraduate diploma from the London College of Printing, then worked as a designer for HMSO and Collins publishers and later as the Design Manager in HM Tower of London, where I designed exhibitions & catalogues and liaised with academic staff, budgeted for the design department, and managed a small team.

A desire to paint more and to have a year out led me to Barcelona in 1990, where I survived by teaching English by night and painting by day. Paintings at this time were often inspired by snakes, using human relationships and mythology as starting points. After 4 years in Spain, I moved to Budapest and later to Prague, where I had my first solo show, Snakes and Ladders. I also worked at this time as the Country Manager for Linguarama Prague, responsible for the overall management for a large business school, reporting to a manager based in the UK. Duties included course sales, marketing, finance planning and budgeting, recruitment and staff management.

After this, I returned to Madrid to work and study (Nahuatl, Maya and Pre-Conquest Mesoamerican indigenous languages and culture) part-time in the Universidad de Complutense. I also worked as a volunteer in BASIDA, a farm and centre for recovering patients with HIV (helping where needed both interior and exterior, gardening, doing mural painting and English). My painting at this time was greatly influenced by the Maya culture and their use of the serpent as a celestial deity.

My return to the UK late in 1999 started with some extra training and in 2000, with becoming pregnant and the subsequent birth of my daughter explaining the lack of exhibitions for this period! However, some paintings from this period were later exhibited in the 1901 Arts Club in September 2003, where I also worked as the Project Manager for this new arts club based in Waterloo. I was responsible for recruitment of new members as well as dealing with accounts and general website writing and monitoring.

Since receiving an Arts Council grant for “Full Circle” in 2005, I have continued to exhibit as a visual artist in addition to project managing larger and smaller projects culminating in group workshops, creating exhibitions, murals and several books. I was commissioned to co-edit an anthology of children’s poetry and have continued to write, publish and read poems and stories (in local libraries for National Poetry Day, in METAL in Southend).

A successful fundraiser, I worked with a group with long-term illness for 18 months (the moment is now!) I wrote, researched and published “The Tree of Light”, a book working with this group in 2010. I chaired a group which organised the very first St Patrick’s Day parade in Gillingham to the delight of my own daughter and local schools; with associated workshops in schools, Gillingham library and community centres.

I worked as a teacher of Spanish, Food Tech and Horticulture in a special needs school (2010-2016) but resigned in 2016 to dedicate myself to my artistic and writing practice and also to continue my passion for organic gardening. I studied Spanish to degree level and took my final exams in 2015, gaining the DELE C1 Diploma (Degree equivalent). Now I use Spanish teaching in Medway Adult Education and also doing supply work in schools.

Deeply concerned for butterfly habitats, I have tracked certain species for many years in Kent where I live and in Dorset, where I holiday. Recent paintings examine butterfly lifecycles and interaction with humanity and the damaging effect of our lifestyles upon them. Like the bee, threatened by pesticide use and habitat damage not to mind the normal rainy British summer, I have worked like many others to create gardens full of flowers for insects and bees and also to campaign against neonicotinoids in every possible way.

With language no problem, I was artist-writer in residence in Buenos Aires province, in Argentina 2018, where I wrote a book with Los Apprendices (The Apprentices) for 3 weeks in Zona Imaginaria, followed by travelling and writing on themes which will be exhibited in July 2019 with the Royal Engineers Museum gallery in Gillingham. I then spent 3 weeks travelling in Brazil to Sorocaba, Sao Paolo province and Minas Gerais in Brazil visiting farms and small town industries in the interior of Brazil. Subsequently I worked with a group in the Royal Engineers Museum in Gillingham, funded by Awards for All. This group will show a collective exhibition to coincide with Armistice Day 2019. My own exhibition “patterns for peace” was exhibited July-oct 2019 in the museum.


In October 2018 I joined Extinction Rebellion volunteering as Office Co-ordinator in the London office and also doing work as a photographer with the Press Team.
Currently working as a tutor of Spanish, on supply and as an artist.