AN ARTIST from Kidlington who specialised in paintings of Oxford’s waterways and plant life has died aged 60.

Mother-of-three Michele Field showcased pieces inspired by the countryside at many solo exhibitions and public galleries.

Her work was also featured on the front page of The Oxford Times’ monthly lifestyle magazine Oxfordshire Limited Edition on a number of occasions, as well as on designs for charity calendars for hospice Sobell House.

Michele Elizabeth Field (nee Wright) was born on June 10, 1953, in Solihull, West Midlands, to parents Dennis, now 87, and Angle (nee Kempen), who died in 2001.

She grew up in Kidlington with her brothers Danny, 65, and Jeffrey, 64, and went to Edward Feild Primary School, followed by Gosford Hill School, where she finished her education in 1969.

Mrs Field took a series of clerical jobs after leaving school, including one at Hartwell Autotrader.

On July 19, 1974, she was working as a blood transfusion nurse at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital, visiting Aylesbury, when she met her husband, Richard, who was working as an electrical engineer with High Wycombe firm Air Flow.

After she passed her telephone number to him via another nurse, Mr Field called her that night and they went on their first date together the next day.

Almost two years later they married in St Mary’s Church, Kidlington, on June 19, 1976, and set up home together in Old Chapel Close.

In 1978 Mrs Field gave birth to the couple’s first child, Simon, and left her job as a nurse.

Marie was born in 1980, before the family moved to Bicester Road in 1982.

After Emily was born in 1987, Mrs Field began to pursue hobbies of gardening and walking, and painted more often.

She first started painting commercially in the early 1990s, opening a number of solo exhibitions, the first being at Woodstock Museum.

Mrs Field went on to showcase her art at other museums, libraries and hospitals around the county, including the John Radcliffe Hospital, the Churchill Hospital and the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre.

She also participated in Oxford Artweeks.

Her main focus was on Oxford’s canals and waterways and this brought her work to many events held by the Inland Waterways Association.

Mrs Field died, surrounded by her family, in the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, after suffering a cardiac arrest on April 6.

She is survived by her father, her husband, both her brothers and her three children.

A funeral service is to be held on Tuesday in St Mary’s Church, Kidlington, at 11.30am, followed by a private cremation at Oxford Crematorium.

The service will be family flowers only, but donations to Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS) UK are welcome.