LIVING IN A MATERIAL WORLD OPENS TO THE PUBLIC 2ND-5TH DECEMBER, PREVIEW 1ST DECEMBER BY INVITATION ONLY, PLEASE MESSAGE ME FOR TICKETS
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Welcome to my world. Maybe I’m an illustrator, maybe I’m a fine artist, or maybe I don’t like labels or job titles and just love making pictures both for myself and for anyone who wants me to.
I jumped out of the box and refuse to get back in.
Enjoy.
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
b 1965
SUNDAY BEST
The eldest of 5, from one of Jarrow’s many big families who had a reserved seat in The New End of St. Bede’s, where Sunday Best was highly competitive.
This has proved to be an unwitting source of inspiration for my recent works, into my 40s when I discovered the smell and the joys of oil paint, as I attempted to push the last remaining scraps of well instilled Catholic guilt out of my newly acquired enquiring mid- life mind that has broken free.
FIVE GO GHOSTHUNTING IN ALLENHEADS
I loved drawing and making things and music from a very young age, squeezing every second out of precious time on my own, spending holidays in a reputedly haunted cottage in Allenheads instilling a life long holiday phobia, but producing a budding Enid Blyton plagiarist by the age of 8.
I claim to have written ‘I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing’ before the New Seekers stole it from my open bedroom window in the early 70s but being just a little girl I knew nothing about copyright law.
I dare say I may have been a different person altogether had we had Wii’s and MSN back then but who knows, a new pack of felt tipped pens still excites me.
Always Very Good Girl, top of the class, Best Brownie ever, place on the altar guaranteed every week as smallest acoustic strumming member of the outrageous(according to the choir master) folk group, and the reason for many a fight in the playground between girls who wanted me to themselves. Girls are scary creatures; I’m still scared of Best Friends.
WHEN SHE WAS GOOD SHE WAS VERY, VERY GOOD
I was so good in fact that my 4’10†wig wearing headmistress was worried about me and was so delighted with my pouring sand down some kid called Gerard’s vest in the sand pit one day, she actually came home and told my Mam. Maybe there was hope for me yet.
Tempted but terrified by the exciting make- up wearing bad girls once I got to comprehensive ‘school’, my brownie badge wearing days came to an abrupt end and puberty led me into the skinny arms of many a sweaty youth, but I still kept on drawing and writing songs, less New Seekers , more Gary Numan. He landed in my head in 1979 with a bang (and stayed there), turned my hair and eyes black and my dress sense upside down forever. I could say I never looked back, but as you’ll see from my paintings I tend to look back for more than is healthy. I may snap out of it one day.
DOWN IN THE PARK
My O levels were slightly blighted by spending too much time in The Park, drooling over a clown who made all the girls silly, an inability to say no, using revision time to attempt underage drinking and smoking John Player Specials in a tent with some guy in a blue bike jacket seriously called Glen Millar. I still get excited about being in a tent, though still a complete learner with alcohol, I endeavour to keep trying and I’m sure Ill learn how to do it one day.
I COULD LEARN TO BE A MAN, LIKE YOU
I made music with my friends, never before had the likes of October been seen on the Catholic Club stage, four teenage girls, me thinking I was Numan, my friend Jill doing her best David Sylvian, and our younger sisters fighting over who was Paul Weller and who was Bruce Foxton.We played a heady mix of Duran Duran, The Jam, The Beatles and our own angst ridden teenage musings, in between the Bingo and The Sunday night Go as you Please, vacating the stage to let Jarrow Elvis take his throne.
By the time I was 18, I’d managed to settle down and become a fairly Good Girl again, after having my heart broken by my future husband, the clown from The Park, as he rode off into the sunset with a new ginger girlfriend who was Allowed To Go On the Back of His Motorbike and didn’t dress up as Gary Numan.
LITTLE WHITE LIES
Leaving school with decent A levels, after knuckling down in my heartbroken state, I went off to Art College in Newcastle , found myself a steady boyfriend who would last 5 years, believing what they told me about Graphic Design being the only way to make a living from drawing.
Pre –Mac Old school Graphic design, with Magic Markers you could pull the heady insides out of, gouache, Rotring Pens and hand lettering, meant I could draw and paint my days away, even if I was painting Black and Decker Drill packaging.
Off to Lincoln to do more of the same at their little art college, a move seriously hindered by severe homesickness heightened by my parents’ decision to get a puppy for my little brother a few weeks before I went away, and also a pining for the clown who broke my heart, who had reared his head again.
I survived, leaving college to find myself a job as a visualiser in a big advertising agency in London by lunchtime after getting the overnight Clipper from Newcastle, where I drew Magic Marker pictures of whatever the bolshy art directors asked me to. I sampled many delightful rented flats in various locations around London, spent too much money in Kensington Market, still horribly homesick, and managed to bump into the clown again. Unceremoniously dumped the poor boyfriend and within 6 months was working in Edinburgh doing more of the same for crappier clients but closer to the Clown with an £11 engagement ring from Portobello Road on my finger until it turned green.
Another frustrating visualising job in Newcastle started when I married the Clown and very quickly reproduced a couple of wonderful baby clowns, somehow drawn back to Jarrow, a stones throw from The Park.
HERE COME THE ALIENS
I turned to freelance illustration work, a much more civilised way to draw for a living, drawing children’s cartoons, greetings card stuff and attempting to write my own children’s stories in between breastfeeding, play-doh and shaving foam on a glass door(good tip, keeps kids occupied for hours), reading little more than Colin
McNaughton and Anthony Browne for 5 years.
When the kids started school, I started teaching Graphics at Newcastle, a job which grew and grew into a 10 year stint of Hard Labour resulting in crazy life-juggling lessons which eventually went horribly wrong. I started to go a little loopy and walked out of my job straight into a damp and scary studio where I’d started to paint and saved me and my lovely family from self destruction.
I COME BACK CRAZIER, BUT FEEL MUCH BETTER
Over the last 4 years I’ve taught myself how to be a proper Mam again, how to paint, how to think for myself, how to cook and bake, how to stop buying shoes, and how to be frugal. My boys have grown into fabulous young men, now stretching out, growing facial hair and doing their own thing but still loving being tucked in at night. Their Dad is still there, watching sport and historical documentaries on TV, cutting his lawn, washing his car and occasionally dragging the Clown out for special occasions.
I have been on a massive journey that has taught me that family comes before everything, that I love working alone, that I still hate holidays except in a tent, that I should paint what I know so long as I’m accompanied by Very Loud Music, that there’s no god watching me, that I should still avoid the bad girls as I’m too easily led, that I should stop being so damned nice and that I’m still that little girl who likes nothing more than time to herself to draw and write and sing. And dress up as Gary Numan.
I hope you like my pictures.
