February 12th 2019

An artist whose work hangs in public buildings and private collections across the UK and abroad has created a unique mural for Alzheimer’s Support’s dementia day club in Wiltshire.

Wiltshire artist Rosalind Robinson has gifted the striking landscape to the Old Silk Works day club in Warminster. 

Her 6ft mural panel now hangs in the club’s indoor garden area, allowing club members to gaze out over a tranquil and familiar vista of rolling Wiltshire down land.

Head of Day Care at Alzheimer’s Support Grant Newton said: “It is a unique gift to the club and it could not be more perfect.

“We didn’t know what to expect as it had to be Rosalind’s own vision, but what she has produced works so well on every level. It is so tranquil, in muted, relaxing colours. The more you look at it the more you see, with beautiful details, birds and plants. The club members have responded incredibly well to it. It is lovely to see people just looking at it.  It is a beautiful, very calming scene that resonates with anyone local to the area.”

Rosalind, a member of the Society of Women Artists, has been a professional artist for more than 35 years. She exhibited her paintings widely in the UK and has been commissioned to create murals for the National Trust, the ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane and Harrods, Knightsbridge, among others.

She lives near Chippenham and is a neighbour of Alzheimer’s Support CEO Babs Harris, who told her about the project to create a new day club, and first invited her to visit the building while it was still being renovated.

Rosalind said: “When I first visited it was a completely empty space with nothing there at all, just wires sticking out everywhere. Then I came to the official opening of the club in May and it was transformed.  It is a lovely, lovely centre, and seeing what they had done with the space I began to think about what I wanted to do in the panel.”

The mural, painted in acrylics, shows Westbury White Horse in the distance beyond rolling hills typical of rural Wiltshire. A statue of Higby, one of the club’s therapy dogs, sits in the foreground.

 “I wanted to use a local landmark and for the view to be a recognisable and familiar landscape. I put some little birds and flowers in the front. If someone is sitting at the table then can ponder on those things and they can relate to it, and lose themselves in it.

“When I saw they had a whippet at the club I knew I would have to include him. So I painted a statue of a whippet, with hairline cracks to show he is in stone. He is looking out at the view, rather than looking back at the viewer, and so directs your attention towards the view.”

She added: “I was really pleased to be able to do this. You never know who is going to be affected by dementia. It could be any one of us and I wanted to do this as my way of helping the charity.”