This is My Story
I suppose I was difficult from the start! My patient mother remembers me throwing my pencils across the room and shouting “I can’t do it!” after my umpteenth attempt at drawing a horse. Why was it so difficult to capture what you feel and what you see?
But along with a passion for horses, cats, Leonard Cohen and big hugs, art became my obsession.
It wasn’t exactly Van Gogh’s Sunflowers when I painstakingly illustrated the life cycle of a tapeworm in Biology – but to me, it may as well have been.
Today I’m a full-time emerging abstract artist living and working on the dramatic Wild Atlantic Way in North Clare, Ireland. Born in Manchester, UK, to an English mother and Irish father, I graduated from college with a BTEC National Diploma in Design. While working as an Art Technician at a secondary school I discovered the joy of creating with clay so returned to full-time study. I received a BA (Hons) in Ceramic Design from Staffordshire University - but mostly I remember making some damn fine dragons.
I moved to Ireland in 2006 and life became a mixed bag of teaching ceramics at the Boghill Centre, selling my work at Doolin Craft Market, and getting into website design. Digital design brought some cool projects – including maintaining the websites of the UNESCO Burren and Cliffs of Moher and Burren Ecotourism – and I joined a local web development company which I loved. But art was always ‘home’, and COVID gave me the rude push I needed to immerse myself and get back to creating full time. And here I am.
When I’m not painting, I’m with my animals – cats, dogs, donkeys and horses – and my fiancé who is a knife maker. I live with depression and anxiety but try every day to be the best version of myself.
