About the Artist

I was born with an inherent love of Nature. At five, I ran the nature table for my class. I also loved to paint. These two aspects of my persona have remained with me into my advancing years, though they have assumed different priorities at different times.

My love of nature resulted in my reading Botany at university, and time spent painting was severely reduced. Marrying whilst still a student and then going directly into teaching (to share my love of nature through teaching science) resulted in my painting being further reduced. Apart from producing one oil portrait of my daughter when she was two, my creative skills were used for designing and making clothes for my daughter and my husband.

So, somewhere the compulsion to paint was lost, without my being aware that this had happened.

Six year’s ago, all this changed. I met a new friend who was grieving over the death of her husband, and my daughter offered me a course at her local college. I was so impressed with the college that I put my name on their mailing list. When the college brochure arrived, I took it across to my friend, to cheer her up, little realising the impact it was going to have on both our lives, mine especially.

We chose to go on a week’s residential course entitled “So you’ve always wanted to draw and paint?” I felt so liberated that I found it hard to believe I had neglected my art for so long. My friend encouraged me to take my art ‘seriously’, by which she meant that I should know the names of all the colours I was using, which granulate, and the differences between the various brands having the same names for any particular colour, and so on.

As a scientist, this academic approach was my usual modus operandi, but I realised in a moment of inspiration, that this was not what I wanted with my art. I wanted the freedom, to choose a colour because it was what I wanted, because I felt it would recreate the impact which my subject had had on me.

Although I have registered my artwork as a business, it is to make the financial situation clear to the taxman, not to produce works of art on a business basis. Not for me the ‘successful formula’ whereby I would be guaranteed a regular income from my painting. I value my freedom to paint what I want, when I want, and to have a variety of styles. I have a personality that does not easily fit into a routine (I call it a rut) and some days I want loose watercolour, wet-on-wet; others, I want semi-abstract, using my watercolours like the poster paints of my childhood; yet others, only acrylics will give me the effect I desire.

The only constants routinely in my work are those of nature and brilliant colour through which I have reclaimed the freedom of my childhood.
 

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In a sense self-taught, I have studied under a variety of tutors from Dumfries and Galloway, and from Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and England.

(Image RA) I paint in watercolour, acrylics and mixed media, and my work is of two styles, both of which reflect my fascination with the colour of the world around me. In watercolours and acrylics my style is loose and interpretive whilst in mixed media my work is much more abstract where the vibrancy of colour and influence of shapes affect my response.

I have successfully exhibited around the UK and my work has met with considerable admiration. I have also completed