How I Ended Up Here

I wasn’t quite sure what to do after my degree so I enrolled on a postgraduate diploma in electronic imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee. The best bit was having a go at hand drawn animation and living in a bedsit overlooking the mighty River Tay.

Sketch for hand-drawn animation “The Lift” which won a Royal Television Society student award. Need to figure out how to get it off a VHS tape!

Then it was into the real world with student debts and not much of a clue. I secured a job at a small TV graphics company in Glasgow. The people were really nice but I hated everything about the work. Stuck in a windowless room trying to make graphics for corporate television with a very expensive computer, anyone who’s seen me trying to operate a laptop will know it isn’t going to end well!

Same again when I moved to another TV company in Gateshead. This time the people were lovely but there were the same issues with the work. I did really enjoy making a hand-drawn company Christmas card but my paints were woefully underused for several years. When the studio sadly folded it was my chance to try something else.

Next, a sideways move into teaching, with a PGCE at Newcastle University and 3 years teaching Year 4s in Blyth. I’ve never worked so hard in my life, apart from when I left to spend the next 18 years as a full time mum. 

During that time I worked on several art projects with young children and enjoyed them all. Working with children teaches you about living in the moment. However I realised quite quickly that I’d be happier if I was just left to get on with the art minus the distractions, sorry kids!

So I spent a whole year experimenting to find out what I wanted to paint and how, and then what to do with it. Of all the experiments these 2 ideas stood out, and I knew that combining ink line drawings with watercolours might just work…

After that year I had a couple of pieces which I was happy with. They included this one of Morpeth which had been my battleground…

Only when I had chopped the bottom off and added the handwritten labels did it suddenly start to work. Then my husband suggested a map of Northumberland, and that was it…

Fast forward to September 2018 and I finally achieved my dream of moving away from my dining room table and into a beautiful big studio in Felton. I’ve been here a year now and love it!