watercolour paintings
and fine art prints
I am a watercolour artist based in Twickenham, UK. I take much of my inspiration from nature and particularly love to paint rainfall and water. My work sometimes hints at an unspoken narrative, inspired by my love of literature and a childhood spent poring over illustrated children’s books.
I’ve been creating art, in one form or another, for most of my life. The need to make things runs deep, whether it be paintings, patchwork quilts, knitted jumpers or bars of soap. My journey into painting began with a number of years spent learning to build up a painting in glazes, using the techniques and materials of early Renaissance artists. I still carry a lot of that learning with me today, though I’ve learned to loosen up a little over the years, relinquishing some of that control and embracing the unpredictable.
Nowadays, I work almost exclusively with watercolours and ink, where I can let the materials do their own thing and enjoy the organic bloom of a cauliflower on wet paper.
I appreciate the cyclical way that I can use water on paper to depict rainfall and oceans or use earth pigments and the gum of a tree to create a landscape. With every painting, I strive to capture a particular mood or moment and to find the beauty in imperfection. Spending time inside a painting takes me outside of everyday life and nothing makes me happier than sharing that moment with an onlooker.
After studying History of Art at university, I spent a number of years learning to work in a very traditional style, preparing a gesso ground, grinding paints from traditional pigments mixed with oils, resins and egg tempera and applying gold leaf to a panel. I owe a debt of thanks to several teachers in this, including Dr David Cranswick and Helen DeJean. I still enjoy studying these traditional techniques, from icongraphy to medieval illumination and could gaze at a Giotto painting forever.
Recently I’ve been having fun creating my own little tributes to the weird and wonderful medieval illustrations found in the margins of the illuminated manuscripts of the 13th & 14th century. The humanity and humour of the monks that created these books really becomes apparent, once you start noticing, I’ve decided to create a separate little shop for these pieces (see link above) and you can also follow my medieval Instagram account.
I’ll end by saying that all of my paintings are created using the finest quality professional-grade artists’s materials, to ensure that the finished artworks will stand the test of time. I love to work with 100% cotton paper and favour pigments that have an excellent lightfastness rating.