About me

I am a Welsh artist, living in Mid Wales.

The way I paint is from inside me. It’s not some mechanical action learned or mimicked: my work is a portrayal of all my happy, sad, joyous and turbulent feelings. I think that my passion for painting is revealed through my approach to my work. My work has been described as energetic, vibrant, theatrical, romantic and erotic. Certainly, I feel that it expresses the essential me.

I want people not only to look at my work: I want them to feel it, both with their eyes and their hearts. I want to create an emotion inside them, because to create something that stirs feeling inside the onlooker is a great achievement.

I live in a little village called Beulah, underneath the Epynt. The memories of my childhood farm combine with living in this very beautiful rural area to give me the inspiration I need to paint.

I love the rolling hills, the ever changing weather, the beautiful bright sky which can turn so quickly into a thunderous slate grey, and then can change the colours of the Epynt itself from calm greeny blue to deep, all-consuming purple, while shafts of bright light creep over the horizon as the sun tries to shine through, transforming the landscape into a patchwork of orange, red, purple, dark blue and green.

How can one not fail to be inspired when one lives so close to nature’s paint box?

I have been told I have a great ability to adapt to all the mediums that I use, which include watercolour, acrylic, oils and pastels. I really enjoy watercolour as it’s a temperamental medium. I use a lot of water and push it around the paper until I get the effect or atmospheric feeling I want. I love acrylics, too. There is nothing I enjoy more than using a palette knife to paint with, to build up a picture in texture, as I am a very tactile person,

Background

I was brought up and educated in Pontardawe, near Swansea. As a child I spent most of my time with my grandparents on their farm. These were happy times: looking after the animals, collecting wild mushrooms with my grandmother, walking the fields with my grandfather, and being more of a hindrance than a help at harvest.

I went to Cwmtawe Secondary School, where I had an inspiring teacher called Mr Griffiths who encouraged me and helped me enormously. We kept all my work and built up a portfolio. Armed with this, and with his enormous faith in me, I passed an entrance examination for the Swansea College of Art where I studied fashion and design.

After many years’ absence from my beloved painting, while bringing up two beautiful children, the desire I feel to paint, and my passion for painting, have become so strong that I have a physical ache inside me if I am not painting.