I was born into a family of artists in Woodcote, South Oxfordshire and went on to study 3D Design at the Berkshire College of Art and Design. After a ten-year musical sojourn ending with a busking tour of Prague, I returned to art and set up a mural painting business working for the likes of Fullers Brewery creating works for their pubs and hotels. When my legs got tired of being up a ladder and swinging about on scaffolding, I turned to teaching and portrait painting, also curating a series of pop-up art galleries in Reading with two other artists.

I built a house in West Berkshire with my husband John and wrote a book about it called Mud and Marriage – A Housebuilding Adventure. Now, as well as looking after my beautiful ninety-three-year-old mum, I am mostly a portrait artist and teacher, I run my own classes and workshops and guest tutor for art groups, but I haven’t given up the music, I sing and write songs for two bands – Beeswing and Tumbleweed.

In this exhibition I will be offering figurative, and portrait works with an abstract flavour, showing lively likenesses and smaller abstract works.

Having been a fairly formal portrait artist for many years I’m approaching my work in a different way this time. I’m an art teacher and have lately been teaching the process of producing abstract work to my students, which I hope has inspired them, but by exploring the subject it has inspired me greatly too.

I’ve taken this abstract approach and applied it using imagery, colour and texture to convey my thoughts and feelings about the subject.