About my art
I make quietly powerful landscape and still life paintings that respond to the spirit of place.
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.
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.
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.