ABOUT
I have created artwork all my life in some form or other. Until the last 20+ years the most dominant forms were fabric and stitch. I did my first “embroidery” at the age of four, a running stitch around the edge of some hessian, with my Grandmother saying ‘one, two, three, four down; one, two, three, four up. My love of co;our,texture and design evolved from working with threads and fabrics having inherited a love of embroidery from my Grandmother and Mother. My work in stitch has been exhibited both regionally and nationally.
Prior to immigratng to New Zealand I studied to become a textile designer of woven fabrics and as well as graduating with a Diploma in Design and Colour I was also awarded a scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Weavers to do a further years study in design. I then worked for a few years in the textile industry before spending my last year in England working on a range of men’s suiting fabrics for the Wool Board to be used during Milan’s fashion week,
I knew before coming to New Zealand that it would be highly unlikely that I could continue my textile career and that my husband and I wanted to start a family. As our two boys left toddlerhood behind I became involved in early childhood education and for the next years I supervised and set up new playcentres, worked in family day care, trained to be a Kindergarten teacher and finally taught in one of the country’s Colleges of education. During this time my creativity with threads took a back seat but an interest in painting began.
Within the early years of my painting career I studied at The Learning Connexion and achieved a Higher Diploma in Art and Creativity. I started showing my work and selling some of it. Since then I have concentrated on painting. collage, pastel and mixed media experimenting with the many possibilities that such media have to offer I continue to explore alternatives and combinations as time progresses. Constant inspirations for me are the land and sea and the myriad of shapes and patterns in both. Within my artwork my passion for texture. colour and design have had a dominating impact on the images created. It often involves many layers that create unique, non-repeatable final images. The work is not just based on observation but is also a response and reflection of what has been observed. There are times when a specific theme creates a series of works but mostly the artwork develops from a vague idea and through an emotive process of mark making to the finished image. Central features of my art over the past years have been non-objective abstraction and abstraction of the landscape, emphasising lines and patterning.