Growing up in the countryside, I have always had a love for animals and the great outdoors. From a young age I have loved to draw, and my drawings have always been of animals and the natural world. From those early works to the portraits I create today, I am proud and grateful for the ability to do what I most enjoy. The greatest enjoyment comes from capturing the likenesses of those animals who are closest to our hearts and parts of our families.

On finishing school in Bristol, I decided to defer my place at university and spend a year working and travelling. I spent five months in New Zealand, volunteering on various farms and smallholdings, and travelling around the country. Working so closely with animals deepened my connection with them and helped me towards my eventual decision to work with them. I then chose to study History of Art at the University of York. This culminated in a final year dissertation on changing Victorian attitudes to animals, as expressed through the art of Sir Edwin Landseer. This study of both animals and art no doubt led to me developing my own business in animal portraiture.

I decided that working with animals was what I would most enjoy, and so after university went on to train for and achieve a City and Guilds Level 3 Diploma in dog grooming. The knowledge and experience gained from working closely with dogs every day has been invaluable in improving my artwork. 

After experimenting with different media, I have settled on coloured pencils. While a slow medium, these allow for fine detail and a great range of colour. I choose not to include backgrounds in my works, in order to allow the animal to take the full focus of the viewer. I use primarily Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils, which are high quality and do not lose their colour over time, and I draw on Clairefontaine Pastelmat paper. Meant for pastel work, this paper has a toothiness which holds many layers of pencil and creates real depth of colour.