I am an international artist who had my first solo exhibition in 1999, and has exhibited widely in North Bucks over the last few years. I paint in oils on canvas or board, using traditional blending techniques to create colourful works depicting nature in all her guises.
Even as a child I loved and admired the renaissance artists, and have spent a long time honing my techniques so that I could adapt these to my own style of painting. I paint realistically, in a slightly stylised format, using blending techniques as a mainstay and my work is always colourful.
Mother Nature and the natural world in general are my greatest inspirations, and I love to portray the colours and patterns found in nature in my work, in fact I see so many patterns that sometimes these take over and become a painting in their own right. I constantly wonder at the beauty that exists all around us and am simply not able to paint quickly enough to commit all my inspirations to canvas.
In fact this lack of time is one of my worst bug bears; it can take up to eight weeks to paint one of my large allegorical still lifes. The amount of ideas that rush through my brain during this process are too numerous to count, I note the best ones down and have a constant list of ideas to work from. I think this is why I cannot restrict myself to one subject matter; I love painting so many different things and one always sparks off inspiration for another. I enjoy painting landscapes, flowers, still life, people, seascapes, imaginary worlds and cottage gardens. I often incorporate hidden objects or meanings in my work too. See what you can spot.
I have also been an avid crafter for many years and early in 2009, put two of those crafts, jewellery design and polymer clay work together with my artistic floral work and began creating a series of focal beads in polymer clay.
These are proving very popular, one of my first buyers describing her bead as "a miniature work of art", which I was charmed by.
Each bead is made individually, is unique, and incorporates my love of nature that governs so much of my work. The beads are formed by applying canework to my handmade bases and come in a variety of shapes and sizes either by themselves,(suitable for beaders to add to their own bead work, a ribbon or leather thong), or as a complete made up necklace.
As you can see from the Gallery pages I have been evolving my polymer clay work at quite a speed and now have a daisy collection and an increasing pool of kaleidoscope beads. I have also been very priviledged to be able to share my ideas and processes in Bead magazine. The ideas for clay jewellery are coming as thick and fast as the painting inspirations - I definitely need more hours in the day!
In short I am a very happy artist, who is passionate about painting and creating works of art.