A farmer’s daughter by birth, my earliest artistic memory is of me crushing mulberries and painting the juice on the rock next to our farmhouse near the Matopos in Zimbabwe!

After finishing school, I couldn't bear the prospect of 'pushing papers' for a living and trained and worked as a textile designer.  Alas, after a few years I found the constraints of commercial design and the isolation of studio life rather frustrating.  So I established a new career in tourism and hospitality and now work full time in marketing a range of performing arts in the UK. 

Throughout my working life, I have always found the need to find outlets for my creativity and infinite curiosity and have produced a wide range of work in a multitude of mediums no matter where I have been.

Photography

I carry a camera with me wherever I go and my awareness of textures, patterns and shapes reflects my love of the natural world and textile background.  At 5ft 1 (and a half) I believe that I have a slightly different viewpoint than most which can make the microscopic mighty and the mighty microscopic!

Mosaics 

I got ‘bitten’ by the mosaic bug whilst helping to create a community panel for an underpass with a great bunch of friends from the Winchester Gate pub.  If you have ever visited Salisbury and wondered about the creation of the mad monkey in the panel on the park end of the Greencroft underpass, it was the beginning of a fascination with testing the boundaries of a restrictive discipline.  As well as working with traditional mosaic materials, in 2009 I have been experimenting with the effects of using different textures, opacities, under painting and grouts using glass as a medium.

Textiles

Based on a photograph of Bat Head taken from the ridge of Durdledoor on the Dorset coast, Window I (see the first image in 'My Work' section) is the first of a series of landscape batiks I am planning.  I also design cushion covers which are all one off ‘croquis’ -  basic design plans, hand painted using pigment based textile paints using a flour resist technique on 100% cotton fabrics.

I have also been stock piling canvasses for the past 10 years and fully intend to paint more in the future!