Having worked in many places from office work to chambermaid to postlady, I eventually decided to give up a good job and pursue my love of art. I did my Foundation course at Grimsby School of Art and then completed a textile design degree course at Manchester where we were encouraged to experiment with colour, texture and different media throughout the duration of the course.

I freelanced for a while selling furnishing designs to various companies although I always wanted to create ‘one offs’ rather than repeat designs.

I have continued to enjoy experimenting with various media. I work in a spontaneous way, using my imagination alongside sketches and photographs from my travels. I enjoy the element of surprise and excitement using mixed media – not quite knowing where a piece of work is leading me. I have more recently introduced freestyle embroidery into my work, sometimes adding to a canvas or painting with thread onto a printed image of one of my paintings. I have enjoyed life drawing for a number of years and often use these as a reference point in my work.

I particularly love Autumn and its wonderful colours and my more recent work is inspired by my travels and sketches from around North Yorkshire. I like to paint intuitively in response to my sketches allowing for freedom of mark and colour rather than total representation.