Wittenham Clumps from Swyncombe is an oil painting that was produced using a wet-in-wet or alla prima technique (Italian for the first attempt). It is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied over previously applied wet paint. The view is from the T-junction at the top of the hill which runs down to Swyncombe church, and was produced on a Henley Arts and Crafts Guild painting day with Anthony Wilder.

Lynda South describes the day; ‘I remember it vividly: the view, temperature, having the ‘wrong’ green with me, even eating a kit-kat, so I must have been feeling very alive to my surroundings. In the afternoon Anthony came to tell me that everyone was packing up and meeting at the church. I still had all the sky to put in and I was trying to translate its leadenness on that day. He looked at my palette and saw I had mixed up loads of a cream/grey colour – he suggested I used that as I had so much of it. I think it worked.’

Wittenham Clumps from Swyncombe was exhibited at the Reading Guild of Artists 72nd Annual Exhibition ‘A Room with a View’ from 26th October – 1st December 2002 at The Museum of Reading, where it won the Marie Dyson Award.

Lynda South studied at the Maidenhead College of Art for her Foundation year and the Bath Academy of Art studying 3D design in ceramics, and then painting and drawing with tutor John Simpson at the Open College of the Arts.

Lynda taught painting, drawing (and fired a kiln) at local primary schools and was a tutor with Adult Ed. OCC with painting and drawing. Exhibiting regularly in her hometown of Henley-on-Thames until she moved away in 2019, she was a member of the Reading Guild of Artists and the Henley Arts and Crafts Guild. She won the Marie Dyson Award for a second time in 2014.