My route here has been long and winding.

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I originally trained as a jewellery designer at Central St Martins. I soon found I wanted to work with more colour and patten and sidestepped into painting and illustration. I was also drawn to 

the fact that fabrics are already loaded with intense colour and pattern so I began mixing textiles and paint. The feel and touch of something is important to me. I suppose my first foray into this medium was creating large needlepoint tapestries that took months to finish. I found the act of stitching to be therapeutic and it sparked me with ideas that I could mull over whilst stitching.

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For me picking up a needle is disappearing into my own space. Slowly the two worlds melded and my illustration became textile based.

 

At first I created narrative pieces influenced by the Greek myths and their wonderful tragedies. 
The storytelling overlapping with my illustration work.

 

Things evolve and grow and presently I’m working on a series of birds.

 

I collect fabrics, in fact I have a bit of a problem as I am fast becoming some mad hoarder with fabrics spilling out of every available space! The gathering of my textile palette is part of the process, mostly from my collection but often I feel the need or the draw to go and search the many markets near me for inspiration.

 

If I have a piece I’m working on I go with a clear list of colours in my mind that I’m looking for but I am always thrown off track when something sparkly and magnificent catches my eye. So things might change and what started out as being a project based on pinks turns into a pink and green project! Its an organic process. I am stimulated by what I find. The act of taking a flat surface and layering it with fabric and stitch to create something with dense texture and depth excites me and drives me on.

 

My pieces take hours and hours to create. There is no 40 hour work week in my life. I sew all day, most evenings and a lot of the weekend. I am obsessed and passionate about what I do. 

There is only a short period of time, as I so very nearly finish a piece that I become twitchy and eager to move on to the next one. That has been an art in itself….learning to finish things!