Occasional Notes

My maternal grandmother, Eileen Stephens, originally trained and worked as an actress and later on she studied part time as a mature student at Gloucestershire College of Art.
As a young child I couldn’t understand the appeal of her paintings. We had a collection adorning our walls at home and I used to think how childlike and simple they were, and to be honest I didn’t think they were very good!
However, much later on, having studied art myself, I could appreciate their appeal and originality.

I love the freshness, simplicity, colour and purity; these are all qualities I aim to have in my own work.
Eileen is one of my favourite artists and she has definitely influenced my work.

I thought I would begin my first blog post by writing about how many of my childhood images have manifested later on in my work as a professional artist and illustrator. I have a very old tatty box at home full of little drawings and pictures from my youth and it’s so interesting to see how these beginnings have evolved to reappear later on in my work. Almost as if my early thoughts and ideas were a prediction of things to come.

Anyone who’s familiar with my work will know about the recurring romantic elements and again this theme started very early on as some of these pictures are from the age of 9 or 10. If I didn’t still have this box I wouldn’t have been aware of how it all began.

I often drew babies as I’m the eldest of seven and it seemed as if my childhood was burgeoning with new siblings every few years. However I wasn’t keen to have lots myself. One is enough.

I’ll be revisiting this theme further down the line as I’ve got plenty more material…