personal statement
BACKGROUND/CAREERBorn in Edinburgh in 1968, I grew up mainly in the Wirral and gained a 2:1 degree in Printed textiles from Manchester Polytechnic in 1990. My work at college incorporated influences from oriental art and design, botanical illustrations and my favourite painters Giorgio Morandi, Gwen John, Winifred Nicholson, Elizabeth Blackadder and Craigie Aitchison. My degree show reflected my preoccupation with quiet, comtemplative moments, and featured small paintings and designs on silk and paper inspired by the life model and personal collections of still-life objects. I worked freelance for a year after graduation, producing and selling paintings, textile designs and silk scarves, and exhibiting in Manchester, Sheffield and Edinburgh.
I began teaching art following a term as artist-in-residence at Marlborough College and stayed for 2 years teaching full time. I exhibited paintings of landscapes and still-life at the Mount House Gallery in Marlborough at this time. Teaching art became my primary focus and I gained my PGCE teaching qualification in 1994 from Manchester Metropolitan University. I taught for 5 years in Staffordshire before becoming Head of Art at Bishop Heber High School in Malpas, Cheshire, where Ofsted inspectors described the Art department as an 'oasis of excellence'! I held this post for 6 years before stepping down in order to bring up my young family.
CURRENT WORK
Still-life has always fascinated me as a subject matter. I paint from direct observation of carefully selected and arranged objects, often flowers, fruit and vessels, exploring subtle visual relationships of shape, colour and surface quality. The act of arranging an intimate and harmonious composition is as enjoyable to me as the actual painting process. I have continued to enjoy painting from the landscape and have recently developed a way of combining still-life with the landscape by painting compositions that appear as views through windows. This has enabled me to experiment with depth and perspective as well as explore contrasts such as inside/outside, light/dark, stillness/movement. I occasionally use watercolours but my preferred palette of often muted colours is achieved by mixing acrylic paint with white emulsion, creating a matt and slightly textured surface quality when applied to canvas.
Having recently moved back to the Wirral and created a permanent studio space, I have produced a new body of paintings whilst rediscovering my favourite preoccupations. Much of this work is currently on display at La Paz restaurant in West Kirby.