I love animals, I always have.

We had a few pets as I grew up. My mum was given a canary a few months after I was born, Tweety would sit on your hand and sing to you if you whistled to him. I don’t remember him ever living in a cage, he had a tray with a perch and a mirror on the floor of our front room. He was free to roam and would sit in the bay window, often getting too hot, fainting and bouncing on the carpet, it didn’t seem to affect him adversely.

I remember my sister having a budgie and we acquired a guinea pig, which was the smallest pup of a litter born during the 1966 world cup. My eldest brother had brought the school guinea pigs home for the summer holidays to look after, not realising the female was pregnant. The school let my mum keep the smallest one, Tiny (our pet names weren’t the most creative) lived in a ‘hutch’ in our living room. It had a glass front and was built at head height into an alcove at the side of the fireplace. He would squeak at us whilst we were eating dinner for pieces of raw carrot or cucumber.

We even had a pet stickle-back at one point which had been caught in a local pond, it would take tiny bits of meat from our fingers. Unusually, we also had a tame starling which my mum had rescued as a youngster. It lived in a cage at night in our back porch, during the day it flew free in the garden and we turned stones over so it could eat the bugs underneath. I can’t remember how long it stayed with us, just that one day it never came back, I’ve always hoped it went on to have a family and wasn’t a victim to the local cats.

Today, my family and I have three cats and some fish in a pond. My love of horses has only grown stronger, I am so lucky to be able to play polo.

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me, wilma and betty
me and brian

I left teaching knowing  that I wanted to do something creative. However, I didn’t really know what. I began taking animal photos having visited zoo’s and safari parks and then created ideas using embroidery on silk, paper cutting and finally deciding to focus on painting in acrylics.

Puffins on silk for blog
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The Framed Animal Series of paintings have evolved over time. I was trying to develop my own recognisable style and was over the moon when this concept began to take shape. It has led on to so much more than I ever could have possibly expected.

The Beginning of the Framed Animal Series

For quite a while I knew I wanted to paint a group of ring tailed lemurs. One reason is that I love them, the other is that a group of them is called a conspiracy!!

I played around with different ideas in my head for quite a long time and did a few sketches, not one of them felt right. A holiday solved the problem, (I wish that was the solution to everything), My hubby and I decided that a weeks break in Madeira was called for and we had a fabulous time wandering around the city of Funchal. We explored the city popping into little galleries and gift shops, I came back with a rather nice fused glass bracelet. In one lovely little gift shop sitting in the window was a canvas with a photograph of a kitten sitting inside a picture frame, light bulb moment!! The lemurs could be in the frame looking as though they are about to climb out!

It’s a Conspiracy

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Lemur-cushion

Meerkat Mob

Everyone likes Meerkats! I have been lucky enough to have had close encounters with Meerkats. They are such characters and I had so many photographs to choose from. I was almost disappointed to hear that a group of Meerkats was merely a mob. There are so many more interesting animal group names. This was the second of my Framed Animals Series and I enjoyed developing the composition, especially the photo-bomb!! If you look closely you can also see a tiny caterpillar and a cinnabar moth on the frame.

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Meerkat-cushion

Gorilla gorilla

This painting is a portrait of Nico the gorilla who lived at Longleat Safari Park. I completed this painting as a tribute after he died. On a visit to Longleat I had managed to get a series of awesome photograph of him. When you look at his face, it makes you wonder. ‘What is he thinking?’

I completed the original painting of his face before the lemur and meerkat paintings, however, he became part of the framed animal series after I added a frame.

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Gorrila-canvas
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Panthera tigris

Who doesn’t love tigers? My daughter and I visited Longleat safari park and were lucky enough to use their Bronze safari package (I can totally recommend it). The zebra 4×4 takes you off road and took us so close to this female tiger. Occasionally we were too close!

In another enclosure we had to move as one of the lions tried to bite the tyres on the vehicle!

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Piglet Litter

When a friend posts pictures of piglets on Facebook, they are so cute and all different colours, you just can’t resist asking to paint them! Once the piglets were running around outside with their mum, I picked a sunny day and took nearly 300 photographs. This was a difficult composition., I had got to my sixth try before I was finally happy. Maybe, having so many photographs is not such an advantage.

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Piglets canvas
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Other artwork from the Framed Animal Series.
Click on an images to learn about it’s story.

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Please have a look around my website, to see the rest of my work. If you are interested in collaborating with me or you are an interior designer thinking of using my products? Please get in touch.

If you would like to stock any of my products in your retail premises, please contact me to discuss wholesale prices.

Or just have a look around my print shop.

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