I have always made things in some capacity. As a child I would draw and paint. Age seven I took my first pottery class, and was instantly engaged, falling in love with making in three dimensions. Working with clay has woven in and out of my life ever since.

Around the same time my maternal grandmother (a member of both the Embroiderers' and Quilters’ Guilds) taught me to cross-stitch, using the free kits that came with her monthly magazine subscriptions. Embroidery led to mum teaching me to use sewing patterns and dressmaking as a teenager, so I could make clothes I couldn’t otherwise afford, alongside GCSE and A-level studies in creative textiles. In the last decade, I have started to explore quilt-making, becoming the fifth generation of women in my mother’s family to do so.

My mother has two quilts made by two different great-great-grandmothers, still in use today.

Other key threads to my work are story and our relationship to the physical world, both natural and wo(man) made. For me these elements together are key components of human existence: to make things and to tell stories to explain our existence, to understand our place in the world, and to make a path for the way we want to shape that place.

Today the core of my work weaves these elements together to work in many dimensions. The three physical, but also evoking time and secular spiritual aspects that come together to form objects of particular power and meaning for their owners.

Daily ritual is the support that grounds me and thus allows me to go out into the world with what I do. It is constantly evolving but at the moment involves some or all of the following: morning usually starts with reading a book (I find if I don’t pick a book up first, I will pick up my phone), followed by journaling (a set format of questions, the framework is soothing) and some kind of tarot pull. Daily contact with nature is also high on the list (she’s not as far away as you think and vitamin D is good for you), I love a long walk but have started to dabble in running, it makes me feel alive. I have been a poor student of yoga for many years, with a sporadic at best practice. As an introvert, quiet in some form is compulsory, I rapidly become unpleasant to live with without it.

I’m immensely grateful that a lot of the people who inspire me are friends, who are out in the world carving the life that best suits them, working to make the part of the world they can influence a little bit better every day. The thing they share is that they are showing up being wholly themselves every day, much like my celebrity crushes: Brene Brown, Hannah Gadsby, and Greyson Perry.

This all sounds terribly worthy, but actually, I love a bit of fancy-pants lifestyle bullshit; I’m very partial to a designer dress and a great pair of shoes and love a pretentious hotel or a Michelin starred restaurant. I also make a mean pot of beans, and drum and bass is sure to get me on the dancefloor.

Let’s create together…