Words and pictures

My work is anchored in writing and many of my paintings are inspired and informed by poetry.

Over the years, I have identified two quotes that fit with my approach and work more generally.

“I feel art has something to do with

the achievement of stillness in the midst of chaos.”

Saul Bellow

“Hope is being able to see the light despite all of the darkness.”

Desmond Tutu

To me, art can express and inspire and encourage that stillness and that hope - stillness that is not passive, but patient; and hope that is not a whisper, but a defiant and joyful shout full of colour and fury.

Memory and landscape

My pictures are inspired by the relationship between colour, memory and landscape meet, and how it feels to be submerged within them. Famously, Proust wrote of the surge of memories of his childhood brought back by eating ‘a tiny crumb of madeleine’. To me, landscape has a similar impact. Our memories are set in the places we formed them – subjective, abstract, emotional, sensory, captured, fleeting, hazy. Memory is impressionistic and unreliable and emerges in spots of colour and light, and the dance between them. This is what I try to paint.

Sharing creativity

I am a big believer in the value, power and joy of making art as a way to express and explore our own feelings and beliefs and experiences. I regularly teach workshops and courses for adults and children, in the UK and Europe.

Find out more.

Pictures and politics

I am not ‘a political artist’ but a lot of my work is affected and driven by what is happening in my local and global community, in that I live in the world and respond to it.

"All art is political.

Art lives in the world, and we exist in the world, and we cannot create honest work about the world in which we live without reflecting it."

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Background

I studied Art at Warwickshire College, and English Literature and Language at Bristol University. I also have a Masters in Child Studies from Kings College London. I have a teaching qualification from Coventry College.

I have worked as an artist and illustrator, teacher, writer and editor for more than 25 years.