I am a self-taught leisure artist whose life has always included drawing and painting.
I was an only child brought up by a widowed mother, living with my grandparents. I remember drawing and painting as a child and commencing oil painting as a teenager still at school.
My art was always there, fitted in occasionally with the demands of work, marriage, motherhood and housework and eventually further education and a career.
My main medium was watercolour. Its fluidity and the way in which pigment blended and ran with water fascinated me in particular by the effects that could be achieved.
Holidays with my husband always included sketchbooks and pencils.
My painting only really developed after my retirement when at last I was free to follow my own pursuits. I attended classes on watercolour and learnt the theory of colour mixing and enjoyed experimenting with different pigments, transparent, opaque, granulation and the ways in which colours interacted both with each other and with water.
My husband Rod joined me by also taking up painting in watercolour and he became quite talented in the medium.
Together we travelled to many places abroad at home and always sketched wherever we went.
There is nothing like sitting and sketching, forming a relationship with the view and translating it to paper. Looking back on these sketches immediately transports back to that moment and that place to feel the breeze on one’s face, and the magic of being there.
Unfortunately, I can no longer easily draw and paint outside or travel as I used to. Age and health problems have intervened.
I am lucky however to have my own studio where I can spend time and lose myself in whatever interests me at the time. I now paint in oils, watercolours and inks and like to use mixed media also.
I enjoy experimentation in all these mediums. I still aim to follow my instincts and to develop my work to be less representational to being more abstract and imaginative. I believe that as an artist this is the only road to real satisfaction and achievement.