Our Story — Relton Marine

Two people smiling and standing close together in front of a colorful, painted mural of various household items and flowers.

Thirty Years of Painting Together

We are Christine Relton and Tom Marine. We both studied fine art and pursued painting alongside regular jobs until we met in 1996 and decided it would be an excellent idea to become professional artists make a living from that.

We tried a collaborative approach to making paintings, loved the freedom, creativity and support that brings and have been painting together ever since.

We have evolved a style of painting very much our own with both of us working on each painting.

Table covered with open sketchbooks featuring colorful watercolor paintings and illustrations, with paint jars and brushes in the background.

A man with dark curly hair and glasses painting an abstract colorful artwork on a wall in an art gallery, surrounded by several framed paintings and art supplies on a table.

An artist creating a colorful abstract mural on a wall, with painting supplies and brushes on a nearby table, and a woman holding a microphone observing the artwork.

Tom is the engine behind it all.

He stretches our paper and canvases, underpaints all the paintings and keeps everything moving and organised.

He has a vast collection of items used for stencilling as part of the underpainting process and is constantly experimenting with new approaches.

Christine has no patience with this careful layering technique - she works really fast but uses the underpainted canvases and paper as a base painting to create the imagery that you see.

Her big thing is composition and the best paintings are when the texture, colour, pattern and energy of Tom’s underpainting shine through this composition.

Still life, travel, landscape, textiles, ceramics, sketch books all feed into the paintings and working together like this has allowed us to create a distinctive style in our thirty years working together.

We love our life as artists and our sole purpose is to convey joy, energy and colour and for you to get a sense of the fun we have making our paintings.

An art studio with paintings on the walls, a large wooden table covered in paint splatters, shelves with art supplies, and a workspace with a pottery wheel. Natural light streams in from windows.

Tom has also been working in the last few years on his own paintings.

He uses his underpainting techniques to explore and create paintings that showcase his drawing skills using a more limited palette and compositions based on his love of jazz.