Statement
After years as a film maker and then video installation artist, I have been developing work in drawing painting and print making since 2011.
As in my film making, so in my artistic practise, I am interested in narratives which reflect the human condition. The work experiments with abstraction and is characterised by a sense of movement.
My main subjects are people and the medium, while mainly oils and drawing, now includes dry point, silk screen and lino cuts, and most recently mosaic using mortar and slate, stones and pebbles and wall murals.
The above statement was written in 2016. For the following three years I had a complete block and was unable to create my own work, apart from doing things for friends and family.
Then in March 2020 we were all locked down.The enforced idleness got me going again.For months I drew everyday objects from life, getting my eye back in. Then in November 2020 I was selected for the IMG Discerning Eye national exhibition in London and subsequently sold the work.
Recognition is a great incentive and now I draw and paint all the time. See Exhibition History for details up to december 2024.
Biography
| 2011-12 | West dean College. Postgraduate diploma in painting and drawing |
| 1988-2010 | Associate Senior lecturer for University of Portsmouth, co ordinating practical documentary units for the BA in Television and Film production. |
| 1996-7 | University of Brighton. MA in Sequence and Editorial design |
| 1977-98 | Freelance radio and video producer |
| 1977-87 | Ten years outreach adult education lecturer for University of Southampton |
| 1972-1977 | Community worker, Notting hill, Portsmouth |
| 1971 | University of London Postgraduate diploma in education |
| 1970 | University of Bristol BA Combined Honours English History of Art Philosophy |
I have drawn all my life, but until five years ago it was under, rather than on top of, everything else. The full time jobs as an adventure playground worker, then student community action organiser stopped as soon as I started to have children- three altogether- but as my husband was a full time architecture student it was important to keep working.
So I juggled a number of part time jobs that I loved- radio producer ( you could bull shit your way into anything in the seventies) researcher, adult education lecturer and youth worker, until the children were all at school and Portsmouth University offered me something more substantial. But I always liked making things independently. I sold a documentary about football supporters to the BBC, got an Arts Council grant to work for two years making films with hospice patients, and then more grants to do an experimental video installation which was exhibited for four months at Portsmouth City Museum.
When I left the University I went to Indonesia to make a film for the charity Children on the Edge, so it wasn't until 2011, when I became a full time post graduate student at West Dean College that I finally realised how wonderful it was to have a studio and an easel and draw and paint all day.
