I am an artist because I can’t imagine being anything else.  A day doesn’t seem complete if I haven’t put paint on paper.   I am a mostly self-taught artist inspired by the colours and textures of the landscape around me.  My grandmother taught me a love of the landscape with its textures and colours, however, my artistic attempts were not encouraged at school, and it was not until much later that I began painting in order to record my responses to scenes which ‘grab’ me.  And I am very lucky to have not only beautiful Devon but also the many places I have visited on my travels to choose from.  

My travels, both for pleasure and work, have taken me to many parts of the world and my basic painting equipment, which packs into a small bag which clips round my waist, comes with me everywhere: terrified atop the London Eye, wandering the streets of Paris, struggling up a Bulgarian mountain, relaxing in a Greek harbourside taverna, sitting on deck of a ship, waiting for trains or planes, and walking in the Devon countryside.  I record my travels in journals with sketches, diary and glued-in bits and pieces.  

During lockdown my travels were of course much curtailed, so I took to a different kind of exploration.  I walked the many, and until now unknown to me, footpaths within a few miles’ radius of my home.  And what discoveries I made!  New views only visible from a remote footpath: little strips of woodland, the colour of trees moving from winter to spring, corners of fields covered with varied wild flowers, ancient bridges, and seeing distant horizons, then out of bounds, from a different angle.  

Back at home these sketches and journals bring back memories of the colours and atmosphere of the places I have been and inspire me to bring them to life on paper.

As well as painting in the studio, I run watercolour art classes in a local village and occasional workshops at other venues.  Before the Covid lockdowns I taught art on cruise ships, an exciting venture which took me as far south as Belize and as far north as Spitzbergen.  The greatest joy is the many people who had never painted before the cruise telling me that they will join an art class or group when they get home.  

I have shown my work in both group and solo exhibitions at venues in Devon and participated in Devon Open Studios and various art and craft fairs. There are examples of my work in collections locally and further afield, as far as New York, Canada, Uganda and Australia.  

I work in a loose style mostly with watercolour because of the wonderful choice of colours - and all those happy surprises.  I also enjoy experimenting to achieve different effects and textures, and seeing how watercolour reacts with different mixed media.  I am attempting to achieve a more abstract-realism look to my work. 

Recently, I have started mono-printing with a gelli plate and using collage in my paintings and I am also working towards creating artists’ books using all these methods.

‘Play’ is a very important part of my practice.   On days when I can’t think what to paint or where to start, I will spend time playing with colour and paint effects, then waiting to see what the results suggest – rugged moorland, soaring mountains, autumn woods, a summer flower border, a tropical paradise, the freezing arctic, or maybe something I’ve never even thought of.  This to me is the joy of being an artist – you just never know where the first marks on paper will lead you.