About my art
I make quietly powerful landscape and still life paintings that respond to the spirit of place.
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My art is an act of openness to beauty in the real world, in its small and vast forms: the huge bowl of evening light on a beach, a glance of sunlight on a windowsill. For me, painting is a way to invite and reflect life-enhancing experience, whether of stillness or turbulence.
Most often, my art encapsulates moments of quiet, reparative appreciation. It’s a solace to me, and one I offer others.
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Since the experiences I reflect in my art are various, so are my materials. I work in abstract and representational ways, using acrylic and oil paint, graphite, charcoal and pastel. I seek balance in my work, but this means oscillating between modes of making. One day I am constructing an image from a representational sketch in the traditional way. The next, I am building an abstract painting, layering paint as an intuitive response to what I have felt and seen. I work in the landscape and in my home studio. My work is handmade, not digital.
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If you would like further insights into the way I work, you may enjoy my studio notes. Read more here.
About me
My passion for painting is fuelled in part by having come to it a bit later in life. After a career in communications in London, I moved to the North of England and pursued writing, my first creative love. I earned a PhD, published stories and poems, and taught novel- and story-writing at university.
The more I wrote, the more I wrote about art. Feeling a longing to make my own, and have tangible work in the world, through my own hands, I began to draw and paint for the first time.
I designed my own fine art education, according to my loves and skills. I have learned from Louise Balaam, Louise Fletcher, and Nicolas Wilton, among many others. There are so many artists whose work I admire. Among the most important to me are Vilhelm Hammershøi, Gwen John and Ben Nicholson.
I love learning, and am constantly searching for new ways of engaging creatively with the world. But I have always looked at the world through an image-maker's eyes.