This imaginary painting features Brown Willy and Roughtor in the background, a big dramatic sky, weather-beaten windswept trees and rain, all of which typify Bodmin Moor in my mind. (Annie Ovenden)

In 1975, Peter Blake, Graham and Annie Ovenden, Graham and Ann Arnold, together with David Inshaw and Jann Haworth formed the Brotherhood of Ruralists. They left their urban lives behind for the sanctity of the West Country; a cathartic retreat which mirrored the romantic dream of their Pre-Raphaelite forefathers. Each group had sought solace and inspiration from an unspoilt time or place. Each held within their hearts Ruskin's plea to young artists in the close of Modern Painters: go to Nature … rejecting nothing, selecting nothing and scorning nothing. The traditions they idolised were romantic and mystical, with strong literary associations. The Brotherhood of Ruralists instinctively acknowledged the common ethos between their fellowship and that of the Pre-Raphaelites. Both groups were seven young artists, spiritually bound by shared ideals and dreams which they had found themselves unable to cultivate in a climate of rigid academic institution and banal criticism.

Annie Ovenden was born in Amersham, Buckinghamshire and studied at the High Wycombe School of Art from 1961-5. She married Graham Ovenden in 1969 and moved to Mount, near Bodmin in Cornwall in 1973.