My work celebrates the beauty in the everyday and my response through observation and memory to the passing of time. I often find myself wandering through my garden and house selecting items to paint, geranium pots, a vase or a favourite cup.

I initially work from observation making endless studies, sketches and photographs of my garden or the gardens at Godinton House where I have my studio. My larger work is a response to these studies and my memory of the garden or place, however fleeting. I enjoy mark making using brushes, rags and scrapers to create a surface which has multiple layers. I begin with loose translucent paint, then building the layers but always leaving glimpses of the layers underneath. Painting to me is physical and I use oil paint as my medium because I enjoy how the paint glides; the translucent glow of burnt sienna and the thick buttery feel of yellow ochre.

I have always collected textiles and vintage homeware, scraps of vintage fabric, a vase of flowers, these everyday objects have a central role in my compositions. My work is about relationships; vases are often family heirlooms used by my mother and grandparents and the flowers remind me of summers spent in their gardens.

My current collection of work draws on memories of the windowsills at my grandfather’s house crammed full of his overwintered geraniums and cuttings taken in the autumn to plant as soon as the spring warmth appeared. The geraniums were often a tangled mess of woody stems, dried leaves and flowers with glimmers of bright green new growth. The row of terracotta pots some chipped and cracked on every windowsill in his cottage and the earthy smell when he watered them.