As a child, I loved to draw and paint, and I was lucky to have parents that encouraged me. I grew up near to the North Yorkshire Moors National Park, and as a family we spent a lot of time going for walks there, I think this greatly inspired my love of nature, the outdoors, and light.
I studied A level art, and sold my first painting aged 18.
However, I also had a passion for dance, and decided to attend the Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary dance, graduating from the professional dancers course.
I continued to paint and sell my work whilst studying, and upon graduating, felt increasingly drawn to explore art rather than pursue a career in dance. I decided to take a foundation art course at St Martins College of Art and Design, after which I directed my own studies into the techniques of the late 19th and early 20th century realist and impressionist oil painters. I discovered that the precision, discipline and focus I had gained from my studies in dance were skills which transferred well into learning realist oil painting techniques.
Painting has become my means of exploring and connecting to the visual world and communicating to others the feelings it arouses. Enjoyment of light, colour, form and atmosphere move me to paint. My preferred subjects are everyday objects or scenes. In still life, working with simple compositions focuses my attention on the beauty of each individual object. My still lifes are painted solely from life, I also complete a lot of my landscapes en plein air. My studio landscapes refer to a combination of studies from life, photographs, memory and imagination. Working from memory and imagination in particular helps me to distill the essence of what inspired me to paint the scene.
I started exhibiting In 2008, and since then have taken part in numerous group and open exhibitions including the ROI annual exhibition and the Discerning Eye.
I was awarded the Huxley purchase prize in 2010.
My work has been exhibited and collected in the UK and internationally. In 2015 I took a break from painting to care for my two young children, returning in 2018.
You can listen to a podcast were I chat with Sarah Ryan, founder of New Blood Art gallery here.
