About

Having lived and worked in Oakland, California since 2002, I recently relocated back to my native home of Norfolk, England.

I have drawn and painted as long as I can remember. Right from the start my inspiration has been nature. I had, like all children, an innate sense of wonder. I am seeing this again with my young daughter’s close examination of leaves, shells, flowers and her other natural finds. This wonder at nature is something that I try to maintain in my life and art.

My work is very much inspired by the landscape of my childhood home but was also shaped by my removal from it. It took distance to see it clearly and to realize how much a part of me the shapes and sounds of nature that had surrounded me were. I don’t think that if I had remained in England my focus would have been so clear.

I was also very much inspired by the beautiful nature that surrounded me in California, but there were always echoes of Norfolk in my work. I was particularly moved by things that were a common link in both places such as foggy skies, marshland, sparrows, crows….

In my oil on canvas paintings I combine tangible elements of the world around me with an imagined nature drawn from my memories of home, my feelings for that landscape and a love of the magical nature of myth and fairytale.

Animals and birds that have a rich folkloric tradition are particularly intriguing to me as they are infused with layers of human history as well as their own unknowable narratives.

For me, nature is a separate yet parallel world. I am most interested in the quiet presence of this world, where it touches our everyday one, rather than in nature at its most grand and dramatic. Familiar birds and trees are to me endlessly rich in beauty and meaning.