"Soulful tributes to the things we treasure"

I've loved art since I was a child when I would fill my sketchbooks with drawings of pets, family members and found objects. 

As an adult, life got busy and for many years I found other ways to be creative until eventually I returned to drawing. Using pastels, I focussed on birds and sold a number of pictures. 

That success inspired me to study Pet Portraiture with the London Art College, after which I began offering commissions. 

In 2012, I was a finalist in the London Art College Student of the Year with an oil painting of a horse and in 2013 one of my dog paintings was Highly Commended in the Poochibald Art Prize. 

Art still needs to fit around my day job and family, but I am always at my happiest when I am drawing or painting, music on and a cup of tea, putting my heart and soul into a picture. 

I'm inspired by the meaning and connections that enrich our lives, and by beauty and light. 

I'm inspired by our capacity to bond emotionally with people, animals and landscapes and by all the shades of feeling that these connections bring to us, whether happiness, gratitude, peace or sorrow. 

For me, this is the stuff of life. In my art, I strive to capture not just subjects but a sense of meaning and connection as well.

 Over the years, my commissions have ranged from landscapes to cars to people, but as an animal-lover my favourite subject is animals, especially pet portraits.

 These make such a joyful gift, and if the pet has passed it's always humbling that my portraits bring both tears and consolation.