I was born near London and spent my teenage years on the Isle of Wight, an island off the south coast of England. After university in the UK and Canada I spent many years working as a speech and language therapist in the NHS and in education settings, and took additional qualifications in dance movement therapy and in community dance practice.
I have been a painter all my adult life and a full time painter since 2016. I am passionate about the importance of movement and creativity in the development of the whole person.
My work is inspired by my past travels through the hills, valleys and coastlines of Wales, Scotland, mainland Europe and New Zealand, and more recently by the beautiful and ancient landscapes of the Welsh Marches on the border between England and Wales where I live.
I use mainly water-based media: inks, acrylics and watercolours, depending on the subject and my mood. If I'm feeling contemplative, then I work quite loosely with with ink and watercolour, allowing the paint to flow and blend as it will. At other times I like to work more energetically with acrylics, building up layers to create interesting textures, scraping paint off and and scoring marks into the surface.
I rarely plan out paintings beforehand as I prefer to work intuitively in the initial stages, taking inspiration from my sketches and photographs following the impulse of memory and feelings about a place or view, and refining the details of the composition more deliberately later.
I exhibit regularly, and my paintings have found homes with buyers from as far afield as Peru, Greece, Sweden and the USA.