Artist Bio.

 

I was born in Manchester in the early 70s and grew up there with my working-class family and my identical twin sister. Growing up was a fairly ordinary upbringing, if you ignore the fact I shared my days with a duplication of myself which wasn’t always joyful…….but when it was, it was fantastically perfect.

 

My earliest memories of my sister and I was of us creating make-believe worlds in our bedroom. One of our favourite things to do would be to go into our duvet covers and imagine we were in Nowhere Land, similar to Alice in Wonderland or Narnia in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Our favourite film was the Wizard of Oz and the Wicked Witch still scares me today. Finding out that the child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a professional male ballerina brought me kicking and screaming into adulthood.

 

I continued down the formal route to higher education and studied Fine Art in the beautiful landscape that is Cumbria. This was the first time I met with other ‘creatives’…..I had found my people.

 

I had various exhibitions and even some sales after I graduated. Then life just took over and I became an Art Teacher as well as developing various successful businesses. Throughout this life journey I have always continued to create artwork and express myself through various techniques and mediums.

​

 

I would say my work has been influenced by two main factors:

The first, and the one I would consider my divine influencer, is Me. My emotions and frequency when working on a collection will impact my artwork tremendously. My ‘Quid Pro Quo’ collection, for example, I began at the beginning of the Covid19. I felt down hearted, my beloved father had not long passed away, I had just gone through a divorce and I was forced to close my tattooing studio because of the pandemic. Completely lost and uncertain of the future I immersed myself into my artwork. My work from that period reflected the authenticity of what I was feeling at that time. The artwork itself, on the surface, is beautifully executed. It shows the subjects to be alluring, playful, elegant, and all together perfect. However if you look a little closer behind the eyes the artwork tells a different story. A story of melancholy, a desire for ‘better days to come,’ a hope that the refrains of modern day life would once again be lifted and the ‘imaginary world’ can once again be returned to.

 

Similarly I created the character ‘Cotton Socks,’ for my hand drawn illustration work in early 2021. She is the main character alongside a snail that runs concurrently throughout the collection. She was born from a quote I had loved for many years from an unknown author:

'I walk around like everything is fine. But deep down, inside my shoe, my sock is falling off.'

The second factor would be outside influences. I use this stimulus mainly to feed my imagination.

I would also like to acknowledge the Artists of today which I am in awe of and admire your unique creativity.

 

I hope you enjoy viewing my art as much as I have enjoyed the process and journey of creation.

​

To all my friends and family who continue to support and inspire me everyday, to my customers who continue to keep my hopes alive and my num1 fan my beloved dad.

Thank you x