I can’t remember a moment when I didn’t draw or paint. It enabled me to escape into another world and this was encouraged when I was at prep school, where we were lucky to have an inspirational teacher. Every year some of us had work entered into the Annual Competition and Guildhall Exhibition, “The Children’s Royal Academy” and in the early 1960s my watercolour of Alice in the Garden of Live Flowers achieved Highly Commended and was hung in the exhibition in London.
On leaving school in 1968 I was accepted into a Foundation Course at Brighton College of Art after which, in 1970, I left England for France where I spent a happy five years. I didn’t really start painting again properly until my late husband Jimmy and I moved to Sussex in 1985 when I joined a local watercolour art class run by Meredith Namsoo. It was a revelation and I began to sell some of my pictures locally. I illustrated a couple of children’s books, which I enjoyed doing immensely but when my husband fell ill with Alzheimer’s, my time was no longer my own and I had to put everything on hold. However, over the last few years I have started painting again but with acrylics, this particular medium proving a revelation. I love the freedom it allows.
