I graduated from St Martin's Art School with a degree in Fashion and worked in the fashion industry for 30 years. I established my own Couture House and built up a large clientele, putting on two fashion shows a year to present my designs and running the workroom.
On retirement, I wanted to go back to drawing and painting and chose botanical art. The exacting nature of the work was part of the appeal. All my pictures are done with pencils, both graphite and colour; the assumption is that work done with colour pencil will be sketchy but my work is detailed and finely finished. It is not quick.
I became a Fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists in September 2019. This was an exacting process which involved submitting work for assessment for three consecutive years. Since then I have shown work at their annual exhibitions in London; I have twice won the Derwent Prize awarded for outstanding work using colour pencils.
For work to qualify as "botanical" art, it has to be botanically accurate and of a stated scale. For it to be "art", it has to have something more. In my work I endeavour to achieve that something more - composition, subject matter, light and shade, sometimes an unconventional aspect of the plant and emphasis on leaves rather than flowers.
No artist wants to stand still. Pushing boundaries is essential to keeping stimulated and one's work fresh. I have diversified into designs for fabric. I am of course still creating pictures on paper and undertaking commissions but some are done specifically to be manipulated later for a printed fabric design. This adds more challenges to the design processes and I am developing a range of bespoke fabrics. It is very exciting as my work continues to evolve.
