My art journey began as a young child when I was growing up in Hampshire, spending many hours alone with a pad of paper and colouring pens for company. This was my happy place, where I could create my own multi-coloured world, filled with random shapes and doodles, covering every inch of the paper.

Looking back now, and having being diagnosed a few years ago with ADHD and Dyslexia, I realise why school was so challenging for me. My brain just wasn’t wired to allow me to sit down and learn from textbooks, be talked at and take tests. The words that danced across the page and the numbers 6,8,9 and 0 just begged to be coloured in!

I couldn’t wait to get home and carry on drawing or painting, which felt as natural as breathing to me.

I left school with very little, including confidence. When you’re told over and over that you’ll never really achieve much because ‘you refuse to concentrate’, you believe that to be true.

For the next twenty years or so, I worked in offices and raised four beautiful children, while continuing to paint in my spare time, mainly commissions for private clients including pet portraits, hand-painted wallpaper, trope l’oeil murals, as well as work for restaurants and clubs.

Some of my best artwork started as a doodle on a notepad while I was meant to be taking notes during a work meeting!

When Covid struck, everything changed. I was painting every day and this gave me the space I needed to realise it was the only thing I wanted to do.

My aim has always been to bring a smile, a happy memory of a moment in time. One such memory sprang to mind when I was painting the pink and orange stripes on ‘Tutti Frutti’. I was back in the 1990s, on a beach in the South of France, where a family was picnicking on a large pink and orange striped blanket.

I now spend my days living in beautiful Cornwall where I continue to create my own worlds, bursting with colour, shape and pattern.

I hope they bring a smile to your face and maybe even evoke some of your happy memories.