About Hazel

I have been drawing, painting and making things for as long as I can remember. I studied theatre wardrobe, then fine art, and was interested in art therapy, but took a detour into teaching, mentoring, and then psychotherapy. All the while, art still played a crucial role in my life, sometimes converging with my other work and sometimes providing a contrast.

 Through the decades, I have painted theatre sets, shop signs, and portraits, and have explored a range of media, particularly inks, oils, and textiles. The natural world, and how we are embedded in it, is a huge source of inspiration, as is the vast world of myth and imagination beyond the material one. It is often when I’m wondering round the woods in Lancashire, and the sand dunes on the Sefton Coast, that images come to mind, and these are what I paint.

The living world also informs my handmade felt. I make vessels which can be used for indoor plants, taking the principals of air pruning and applying them to the green beings which live in our houses. I find the process of felting very satisfying; transforming loose fibres into sturdy objects. It is an ancient art that connects me to the human story and is a way for art to be useful as well as beautiful.

I also love poetry, and sometimes words and images arrive together, or influence each other. I don’t see them as that far away from each other – just different ways of expressing something about this magical and confounding world we live in, the mystery of the lives we inhabit, and our human nature.