Inspired by the wilderness of nature and people, my artwork expresses resilience, abundance and hope. As a working class woman born in Walsall, my early experience of growing up in a post-industrial town, lined with abandoned factories and disused canals, exuded a sense of apathy and inertia. Walsall’s glory days of a bustling leather-making industry serving Victorian working horses with saddles are barely visible now, amongst a foreground of graffiti-covered walls, vape and charity shops. When New Labour moved out in 2010, it stripped the town of the last of its vibrant nightlife and high street.

I’m fascinated by places and objects that tell a story, and have that sense of history and time engraved on them.

I found solace in the art studios of Walsall College where I studied a Foundation Degree in Art. Here, I discovered the glamorous and shimmering paintings of David Hockney’s Californian series, ‘A Bigger Splash’. I experienced being transcended to an atmospheric and warm culture through Van Gogh’s ‘Café Terrace at Night’.

Being inspired by art fuelled me with hope that I could aspire to a better quality of life, surrounded by beauty, generosity and more fun.

For me, natural untamed beauty encapsulates generosity: infinite colour palettes, the abundance of flowers existing in all shapes and sizes, and the resilience to adapt to different environments. I paint with a sense of possibility, with a little fun sprinkled in, to uplift the viewer and bring them back to nature; a tonic for the velocity and anxiety-inducing contemporary life.

My painting process builds up layers of oil paint in an intuitive way. I want to create a sense of time passing in my artwork. Through the way I layer paint, I’m exploring the fragility, resilience and spontaneity of nature, while allowing the work to develop and reveal itself over time. This is also a nod towards the passing of time, encouraging a sense of history, curiosity and being present.