Drawing for me is personal. As a girl I drew, I drew through things I might never name or say aloud.

My mother was strong, busy; the anchor of our family. Somehow amidst the chaos she would find time to read books. There were so many books I would often pretend I was a librarian (when I wasn’t drawing that is). Other times I’d make toys from things laying around the house; things other people would have happily discarded if it weren’t for me imagining them into something else entirely.

Finally I had the opportunity to study art. I fell in love with sculpture and found objects, pieces of the past, pieces of the Earth, trash to some but never to me. Whilst this love never died somehow I find myself drawing again, for me it’s catharsis. It’s a way for stories to work themselves up and out of my bones.

My art is reflective of my inner-world and the interplay between that and everything external to me; people, places, politics… it has strong roots in Family, to be a girl then, to be a woman now. There is a heavy emphasis on ‘Mother’ and what that has come to mean to me.

I don’t plan my work. If I am painting I will start with some vague intention but one of the things I love is the freedom afforded to me through this process. Mistakes can be re-worked until I am satisfied and by the time I’m done it is all part of the finished piece.

Drawing is more of a ritual, a practice … and I find I must always begin with a good splashing of tea.

I splash the tea across the paper, leave it to seep in and eventually dry then study the shapes it leaves behind. This inevitably takes me somewhere other than here, out of the now and into a realm where stories start telling themselves through me. I can lose days in this space, it’s like some kind of magic with the story of the Woman being told over and over again.

My work is reflective of my inability to be boxed in. To be categorised or on-brand would feel off-brand for me. I am without a plan, without direction other than to be reactive to the happenings around me. I choose my mediums moment to moment and whilst you may notice some common themes running through my work I will no doubt surprise you with something that seems out of my world from time to time.

My mother found her escape in reading stories and I have found mine in telling them through visual means, with textures, shapes and colours and rarely ever forgetting an orchestrated spillage of my cuppa beforehand.