I am an artist and creative based in Hampshire, on the south coast of England. I studied printed and woven textiles at West Surrey College of Art and Design and many moons later, City & Guilds in Creative Embroidery. This reignited my love for colour and led me down a path of dyeing wool, threads and silk fibres, to make felt by hand. I could draw with them to make magnificent sunrises and scenes with rich and exuberant colour, as well as crafting exquisitely fine nuno felt wraps and scarves. During these times, I hosted numerous workshops offering a creative refuge.

My studio was at the Sorting Office, Eastleigh, and I had an incredible opportunity to ‘forward my practice’ with the support of ‘a space’ arts and Arts Council England. I said goodbye to fibres and welcomed in fabric, dyes, print bench….. the whole shabang!

I was able to attend courses at the Committed to Cloth Studio under the wing of Leslie Morgan and I spent a couple of years learning, exploring and playing with the numerous techniques for applying dye to fabric. Who knew there were so many? And gaining an understanding of the technicalities, chemicals and fixing of dyes, mostly through making mistakes! The process of applying dye to fabric can take months; preparing fabric, waxing, painting, fixing, washing, repeat. Spontaneity is challenging under such restraints although I was intrigued by the unpredictability of colours running, mixing and resisting soy wax.

I found solace in troubled Covid times by playing with watercolour inks. One drop of a couple of colours, into a pool of water, and they dance together and against each other. It’s fascinating and calming. Doodling too. Paper cut to 10 x 10cm. Hundreds of them. One leading on to the next. Circles leading to more circles, leading to lines, pens, colour, paints, crayons, wax, texture. When creativity deserts you, draw circles!

In 2023, I was privileged to be one of the last people to be inspired by Christine Chester through her exemplary course Poetry of Decay. Working on postcard sized paper, I played with inks. texture, bleach, dyes, wax, crayons, letting one work lead on to the next, and still going strong a couple of hundred later. I took these to a larger A2 scale; lots of texture, allowing paints and inks to do their own thing. None were precious, none are finished. I have 40 or so and the sander is calling me!

I’ve also been delving in to acrylic paints, which I haven’t touched since art school. My mentor in this fascinating world has been Louise Fletcher and I do believe I’m finding my calling. I’ve reignited a long lost love of drawing; seeing, looking, noticing and mixing it with the spontaneity of fluid paint and inks, the texture of thick paints and grounds, and the resists of oils pastels and crayons.
These are fascinating and exciting times for me.