Personal Profile

Personal Profile

Growing up in London in the 70’s & 80’s my creative life began with an interest in fashion, embroidery, textiles, vintage looks. As a teenager I found myself in and around different subcultures with different ways of expressing themselves and a DIY approach to life. I started at London College of Fashion but it wasn’t for me. So….

I moved to Nottingham, and studied at the art college where I now teach. I fell in love with printmaking and photography and went on to gain a Fine Art Degree (Painting and Printmaking) in Sheffield via San Jose University and San Francisco.   During my degree I became obsessed with darkroom photography rather than painting or printmaking, making a series of large scale photographs of kick boxers for my degree show.

My earlier work centred on self- portraiture and I remain interested in the different personas we create throughout our lives. I was inspired by the early film stills of Cindy Sherman and created mini dramas that were private moments. Later work explored double exposure photography and made up characters, in an attempt to make sense of the stages of my life and the locations I have inhabited.

I graduated from Nottingham Trent University in 2006 with a PGCE in Post Compulsory Education and have been teaching at Central College Nottingham since then (I am course leader for Level 2 Art & Design).

In 2010 I went with a friend for a weeklong Summer school at HandPrint Studios in Penzance and fell back in love with Printmaking. I have since taken courses in etching, collagraph, lino, solar plate and screen printing and have been a member of Leicester Print Workshop for the last 5 years.

Some of my prints combine photography with print processes and I have played with deconstructing and rebuilding architectural images, overlapping and double exposures. Conceptually I am interested in personal geography, layers of memory and location, architectural presence, personas and identity, belonging and self.  I have mainly been making work to participate in print exchanges. I love to learn and recently completed an Open College of the Arts Printmaking Level 1 course to challenge myself in a more formal academic way. I have always enjoyed colour, texture, collecting ideas and images and have been working on techniques and processes with some success and improvement in these areas.  I chose to study at OCA as I am experienced and have my own studio and access to print facilities but I want to develop my ideas through research methodologies, contextual references and critical frameworks.