When I first opened my shop and gallery, Fountain Stone, in 2019, I was beginning my career as a professional artist, working mainly in print and exploring my lifelong love of birds and nature. Initially, my work was influenced by traditional woodcuts and old book illustrations. Early pieces took the form of individual wildlife studies using the carved lines of relief printing to express form, texture, and light. I then began using the intaglio process of dry-point etching and found that the time-worn aesthetic I could create seemed to echo an ancient connection to the natural world around us and this became my medium of choice.

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​Following a return to full-time work in early 2024, my artistic practice inevitably took a back seat, and any creativity was channelled into precious bursts of activity. Far from restricting my development as an artist, this has in fact been an intense time of discovering a more confident voice and developing skills which are primarily focused around abstract reflections on the local landscape. Over the last two years I have engaged with mentors and undertaken Newlyn School of Art online courses to develop my practice which now incorporates combined use of paint and pastel.

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More expressive techniques and materials have injected my work with a new vitality, enabling me to capture elements of the Galloway coastal landscape, particularly sites I frequent around the Isle of Whithorn and Monreith. I am inspired by naturally occurring colour variations in rocky outcrops and stone-scattered shorelines, and angular shapes sculpted by wind and sea erosion. How these inhospitable hard surfaces become colonised by wildflowers, lichen and a myriad of seaweed species provides a constant source of wonder which I try to capture in my work.

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