Born in 1961, I was brought up in the south east of England until 1980, when I left to study at the University of Edinburgh. I spent five years in Edinburgh, before returning south. First to north London, and then south of the river to SW20.

My time in Edinburgh, with its many wonderful galleries, ignited my passion for the visual arts, particularly of the twentieth century to modern day.

Although I have had no formal art education, I began seriously to take to drawing and painting myself in my thirties. Over the years I have had input and insight from a wide range of artists and teachers through attending courses and classes at or with: Wimbledon College of Art, The Slade, Heatherley’s School of Fine Art, Central Saint Martins, St Ives School of Painting, Edinburgh Printmakers, Leicester Print Workshop, CityLit, SCOLA, London Drawing, and Fielders of Wimbledon. In June 2014 I took on the lease of my first art studio at Lombard Road Studios in Wimbledon, South-West London, run by ACAVA.

I work with a diverse range of media and subjects, from figurative, botanical, landscape, to abstract. I am constantly fascinated by the creative process, and in particular the notion of ‘mark-making’, how visual marks, both intuitively and precisely placed, are interpreted and can frequently initiate a deeply emotional response.

Influences are possibly too numerous to mention; any visual art – be it drawing, painting, print-making, graphic design, photography – seems to have the potential to offer up something that can teach and inspire.