I spent quite a few years away from painting during the time I was concentrating on my textile art. In January 2004 I took the first steps to getting back to painting, by joining a locally run watercolour class.

As I regained my confidence I returned to using acrylic paint, my preferred medium. I enjoy using acrylic paint because it is very robust: It dries quickly, allowing for a very expressive style of painting. It can be built up into thick layers of intense colour and texture.

The subjects I currently enjoy painting largely reflect the influential place I live in: Bembridge is a very inspirational place to paint, with it's unique land and beachscapes and fantastic, theatrical skies .

The spectacle of the annual trek to St Helens Fort is the inspiration behind a series of paintings I have recently produced.  For those who may not know about this bizarre ritual known as the 'Fort Walk'... each year some 3,000 people venture out from the beaches at St Helens and Bembridge to touch the wall of the Palmerstone fort and walk back again. It happens when the tide is at it's lowest, on one of the rare occasions when the fort, which is usually surrounded by sea, can be waded out to along a narrow shingle spit.

It is the scale - and perhaps the absurdity - of the event that fires my imagination. I love the interaction between the vastness of nature and the minuteness of the people; the juxtaposition of the huge sweeping sky and sea with thousands of ant-like humans.

I think it would be fair to say that my work is varied and the subject matter I tackle - diverse. However, the single component that ties them all together is... colour. Colour is what interests me the most in both painting and creating textile art. I love the expressive and emotive potential of colour and how it can create space on a two dimensional surface. In terms of artistic genre - I am a 'colourist'; and the palette I choose is vivid, vibrant and pure.