Beech Wood in Spring Painting

I was born in 1958 and raised in Cheshire, England. Even as a small child I was constantly drawing and painting - often getting into trouble for my doodles at school. I lived and worked in Lincolnshire (where I met my husband Paul); then London, and finally felt a strong spiritual draw to live in Somerset. We have been living in Somerset for over 18 years now - and it feels like our true spiritual home. we have raised three lovely children, two of whom have flown the nest. We now live our youngest daughter and our animal menagerie in Street. Somerset is a very green, rural area of the country and has attracted many artists to settle locally. I have continued painting and drawing throughout my career - progressing from watercolor and pastels to acrylics, oils, wax and sculpture. I studied Art & Design Foundation in 1990 and was awarded distinctions in almost all subjects. I have continued developing my creative skills and expertise, since then as part of an art club and I have been working as a full-time artist since 2009 . I have been developing my style and creative interests and work with my good friend and fellow artist Caroline Hayles in Asney Studio or in my own garden studio. Art has always been an essential way for me express my emotions, creative ideas and thoughts. I am often inspired by my active dream life and by my love of nature and organic forms. I am also inspired by color and light, energetic forms and spirituality. I use the technique of 'mindfulness' in my creative process and become totally immersed. The majority of my work is abstract expressionist painting in acrylics and latterly oils on canvas - my style is quite loose and dramatic; although strangely when I work with pen and ink I prefer to work small and detailed (a la Klee). I like to draw, paint and sculpt from life models. I also enjoy working with molten wax in encaustic, and batik on fabric. I like to 'tune in' to the process of creating a piece of art; it often takes a number of weeks for my ideas to crystallize, and to decide which media is most appropriate. However, once I start on a piece, I find that the process takes over, and I enter into the flow - so that the art may develop in a different way than I had first envisaged. In some of my creations, my somewhat dark or irreverent humor is allowed full rein in the "Dead Donkey series" (pen and ink).