I am an artist.

 

I have always been an artist but it was after gaining a degree in classical singing from the Royal Northern College of Music that I claimed the title Artist.

 

I have spent many midnights and brushstrokes exploring the secrets of non-verbal communication, having never quite mastered the skill of effortlessly and immediately interpreting the myriad of facial nuances exchanged and understood in daily human interaction. I would paint every person I ever met if I could.

 

The study of humans through art offers both moments of clarity as well as new, ever more perplexing and fascinating questions.

 

The more I paint the more I must paint.

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I never aim to flatter, but rather to engage the subject’s character, to recognise certain parts of their private nature, to comprehend, to distinguish them.

 

I take inspiration from the people around me and the people in the books I read, films I watch, music I hear and write. I take it from the artists I admire; Vermeer, Gentileschi, assorted Nicholsons, and both my parents, to name very few. I take it from the fruit in the garden.

 

It is a privilege and a joy each time someone trusts me to paint a person of importance to them.