Each time I review my bio and artist statement for a submission or exhibition, I have a little to and fro with myself about how much I want to share about myself. My art practice is a container for my own exploration, expression, meaning-making, and healing. It’s inseparably linked to who I am and how I experience the world, including my experiences with – and responses to – loss, chronic illness, and disabilities. So every time I share my story, it feels like an incredibly vulnerable thing to share…

In my research process for the commission I’m working on (an abstract landscape inspired by rural Dubbo in Australia), I used a tool that we used when we were preparing to immigrate to the Netherlands and choosing a neighbourhood to live in… Google maps will give you a wonderful bird’s eye view of the landscape.

Working without a plan, feeling your way forward, and making it up as you go – what some people call working “intuitively” – sounds like it would be easy and have you creating your paintings really quickly.

I don’t always pre-mix colours, but I find it’s a handy thing to do when I’m working on a large canvas. Especially if I want my colours to evoke memories of a particular landscape, then I like to carefully select my colours before setting off.

When I paint landscapes, I really want to show people how the landscape FEELS – both as a sensory experience and as an emotional experience…

Between my blurry vision and the mist diffusing the light, today’s walk was magical! So much inspiration for painting!

Since committing to my art full-time in 2020, at the end of each year I’ve taken time to look back on the art I’ve made over that past year. I use that to learn more about my creative development, decide the focus for the art I want to be creating next, and get clear on all the ways I want to learn and deepen my art practice in the coming year. Several people have asked me about how I do this, so I thought it worth sharing with you all. So here we go…

Maxima Park was so beautiful in the mist yesterday. I love these almost black and white, high-contrast scenes… they’re inspiring me to do some monochromatic and muted landscapes!

This is what’s currently on my studio wall, in different states of completion… a series of abstract landscapes inspired by my visit to St Ives last Summer.

Art is so subjective. I love that about art. And I appreciate a wide variety of kinds of art.

And also, as an artist, creating involves constantly practicing discernment. Each next creative move means saying yes to one choice and saying no to everything else I could do.

At the end of each year it’s become my practice to print out pages with thumbnails of all of the art I made that year so I can look back on it, and reflect on my practice, my growth, and where I want to go next.

These are all the paintings I completed in 2024. One hundred and five paintings!

In between walks, family time, naps, spring-cleaning the house, and fighting off the flu, I’ve been lining myself up for a good start to 2025 in my studio…

I’ve been enjoying exploring poetry in recent months. I love finding poems that resonate deeply or express experiences in ways that move me. And I love it when I find a poem that expresses through words something that I was trying to express through the painting I created, as happened with these collections:

I’m producing a limited range of greeting cards locally. Here’s how you can order them…

I’ve been really enjoying the fluidity of inks, but realised I needed to do some methodical research into the capacities and qualities of different inks. Some dull a lot more than others when they dry, for example, which can be quite a disappointment! I wanted to compare brands and see which colours hold their colour best as they dry.