How I got to where I am.....

Right, let's see.  Let's imagine a frog leaping from lily pad to lily pad.  Each lily pad represents an important stage on my creative journey.  Plop, I am born (Rochdale, Lancs.)  (Being born is essential to creativity).  Plop, mum and dad plonk me naked on a roll of wallpaper with a paint brush and a pot of red paint.  I am very small.  Sadly I do not still have that first painting of mine.  Plop....you get the idea now....I go to school and draw a Mother's Day card in felt-tips.  It's a tree with millions of tiny pink flowers.  My teacher sends me round school to show the other teachers and says I've really gone to town on it.  I draw and paint a lot but I'm not very good.  I do a special painting on a big board, lots of pattern and colour (see unnaturally-posed picture).  I'm maybe 8 when I do this.  My dad paints over it at some point, probably when he can't afford any board for his own painting.  In later years he gives me some of his rejected paintings to paint over which makes it ok. At 13 my best friend and I make bow-ties and sell them at school because sadly they are in fashion at the time.

At 16 I start A-level art along with French, German and English, but soon drop it thinking that I can do art on my own anytime and I don't need to be taught.  An ardent vegetarian, I design some MacDonalds Murder Burger t-shirts and sell them at Grass Roots in Manchester.  I also sell one to my history teacher which I'm extremely pleased about.

Mistakenly I end up doing European Studies with Dutch at Hull University.  I drop out because I hate it and I'm not an academic.  I go on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme and I paint fabric and make it into cushions. Also I take an evening class in screen-printing, which I love, and produce my first greetings cards.

Plop.....my next lily pad is the Art Foundation Course at Rochdale Art College. Here I last about 6 months before I get fed up of being told what to do. However I do learn that it is possible to 'draw' with a sewing machine, something which I return to maybe a couple of years later. In between times I'm doing Employment Training with the Scottish Wildlife Trust in Edinburgh, where I end up in the design office after a bleak week on a Scottish hillside convinces me that conservation isn't really what I want to do. I love the smell of the art room. I learn some typography and do some illustrations for the newsletter.

From there I move to Nottingham and buy myself an old Singer sewing machine. Plop. I try a bit of freehand embroidery, feel right at home with it, and that's what I do, mostly happily, for the next 14 years....plop...plop....plop.....

......then I get really bored of sewing and frustrated with what it can't do. I have in my mind a way that I want my images to look and I can't get them to look that way with the sewing machine. I realise that what is important to me is the image itself, not the way in which it's created. I think that maybe I'm a frustrated print-maker and contemplate going in that direction. However, a) I'm too impatient to learn b) the equipment is too expensive to buy and c) there's nowhere in Nottingham where I can do it if I can't do it at home. On a whim - plop - I buy myself a Bamboo Fun graphics tablet, plug it into my laptop and I'm off! I take to it like a duck to water (we're still in that pond) and find it fun (does what it says on the tin) versatile and full of exciting potential.

So here I am sitting on my Nottingham lily pad which I have a feeling is going to flower beautifully this year........

........and just for the record, I do not resemble a frog in any way.