I have been drawing, painting and making things for as long as I can remember. When I won the school art prize at 18, I started to wonder if what I did for play was really something I could do for work. I studied theatre wardrobe, then fine art, and was interested in art therapy, but I diverged 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 and textiles. More recently I have returned to my original love of painting with oils, and in my 60th year I have also returned to putting my work as an artist front and centre. It’s perhaps what I should have done a long time ago, but I have no regrets; all the experiences of my life inform and enrich my art.
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.
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.
