As a self-taught artist who came to painting later in life, I work mainly in oils and acrylics, and my paintings move between abstraction, expressionism and symbolism.

I think I’ve always been someone who notices things — feelings, moods, small details, the things that sit beneath the surface. Painting has become a way for me to explore some of those things and make sense of them.

Whilst I’ve always been creative, painting came to me unexpectedly. It very quickly became something I couldn’t live without. As a queer and neurodiverse woman, it was the output of self expression I’d been missing my whole life.

My abstract work is often about the inner world: emotions, memories, experiences and those thoughts and feelings that can be difficult to explain. I usually begin with an idea or a feeling rather than a fixed image and then see where the painting takes me. I like the unexpected things that happen along the way — a colour that changes everything, a mark that needs to stay, or a painting that becomes something completely different from what I had in mind.

I also make more symbolic work, using familiar things — animals, figures, landscapes or objects — to explore ideas that are a little harder to put into words. Sometimes the meaning is quite clear to me when I paint it; sometimes I discover it along the way. Nature, mental health and issues facing women tend to always underly my creative work.

I never set out to make paintings that tell people what to think. I like the idea that a painting can mean one thing to me and something quite different to someone else. We all bring our own experiences to what we see.

If one of my paintings catches your attention, I hope you’ll spend a little time with it. Perhaps something in it will resonate with you in a way I never could have predicted. And if one eventually finds its way into your home, I hope it becomes part of your story too..