This year I'm showing with the art group Abstract Edge at the pretty church of St. Michaels, Discoed. Located on the borders of Powys, Herefordshire and Shropshire. The exhibition opens on Saturday 2 September with a 'Meet the Artists' event at 12 noon till 2pm. It continues daily 11-5pm until take down on Sunday 10 September. It would be great to welcome you so if you're doing the H.Art trail, come and say hello!

Delighted to be showing my recent work at Aardvark Books & Cafe from 3 - 11 September 2022. The Private View is on 2nd September 6-8pm, please come along, it would be lovely to see you. This project has been quite a departure for me, I don't usually work to a theme.
I found it quite a challenge to make an abstract response to something so literal. The story of the Shield is from The Iliad by Homer. During the battle for Troy, Achilles loses his armour and his mother, a sea-goddess called Thetis, asks the armourer to the Gods Hephaestos to make him another. It is a glorious, highly decorated golden shield, portraying imagery which is detailed on Book 18 of the Iliad. My response though was to work in gold leaf and interweave dark blues and pale misty colours to evoke the shield shimmering through the mists of time. This remarkable story has perpetuated for 2000 years. I'm looking forward to seeing how the other artists in this group show have responded to the theme, which will be curated by the highly talented Shannon Donovan.

New work will be exhibited during H.Art Open Studios at Aardvark Book Barn, Brampton Bryan, SY7 0DH 4 September - 19 September 2021.The exhibition features work by the Abstract Edge group and I will be stewarding for several sessions so do come along and say hello.
This artwork, Riverwalk 4 is one of 7 paintings I will be showing and is part of my ongoing project Riverwalk begun in 2019.  Walking the riverbank and observing the changes throughout the seasons, including dramatic flooding and bank collapses has fed into recent work, some of which became very monochrome, due to lockdown! Yet colour is never far away and returned once the Coronavirus situation eased and the garden came into bloom.
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Whilst on a field trip to Windsor Great Park I received news from one of my collectors that they would like to buy another painting.  This time it will be a Christmas present!  It is so encouraging when a painting goes to its forever home and even more so when a collector returns to acquire another piece.

The field trip to Windsor Great Park was an opportunity to check out the ancient oaks, many of them hundreds of years old.  Although as they age some of them need props to support their huge branches, these wonderful old trees are almost sculptural in their twisted and partially decaying forms.  Just thinking about what they have seen over the years is remarkable and they are bound to appear in my work eventually.

My other news is that I have decided to withdraw from the PhD studies.  It was a difficult decision and one not made lightly.  The University were very supportive and the process of withdrawal does give you time to reflect and talk things through with your supervisor.   I am glad I had the opportunity and the research I started, together with the work made will continue to feed in to future work. I made some good friends over the months and learnt a lot too.

After I finished my MA in 2015, I thought about doing a PhD but decided that after 2 years of studying painting, I wanted to get out there and do it!  I watched as my peers settled in to their PhD studies and I was awed and even more convinced that a PhD was not for me.  But as they say 'Never say Never' -  and so I'm officially a PhD Candidate and the first semester starts on Monday and will last five years.
I'm a landscape painter and my work focusses on investigating the different ways of translating what I have seen and felt into paint.   This is a page from my workbook and is in acrylic with collage and oil pastels.