Victoria Stanway became a professional artist in 2008 to meet demand for her paintings. Working from her studio in Oxfordshire her practice has focused predominantly on the landscape in various forms and methods.

Her first series of work entitled 'Landscapes of the Mind'. are inspired by a combination of fading memories, and dreams, often citing references from her past, conjuring mindscapes that are thought provoking and emotive.

Victoria comments on her motivation for this first series.

"I grew up in a dying milltown in east Lancashire, which consisted of rows and rows of back to back terraces, redundant textile mills, and factories all crammed in together in a chaotic fashion, but it was surrounded by luminous countryside which I would escape to. These paintings are often fragmented, contrasting and blurring the references, reflecting my feelings towards them.

You can sometimes see reoccurring symbols in the paintings, such as buildings and windows, often with strange characters I remember from my youth lurking in the shadows. The terraced houses represent oppressive, claustrophobic, restricting memories, of feeling stifled and hemmed in as a child. I take these ideas further in some paintings, constructing narratives which have had a cathartic impact on my practice"