I have been scribbling on bits of paper for as long as I can remember. As a little child my dad used to bring me home big piles of the old dot-matrix printer paper from the University which I would plow through with my coloured pencils and felt tip pens. If I went into the university with my dad to hang out with him in his office I would commandeer all the chalk in the vicinity in order to draw giant, fantastical murals on his black board.

Nothing much has changed! I went through school drawing all over everything, then went on to Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University in New Zealand to really get to grips with this whole 'art' thing. My tutors would often tell me that my work was very 'design-y' as if this was a bad thing (which never made much sense to me at the time). I loved design so decided to major in that area, but i never became so seduced by computer technology that i stop using paints and pencils to make my marks. Now, after working for 8 years in the design industry, I still put aside my computer stylus and reach for my pencil and paint box whenever possible. And now I also understand what my tutors meant when they said that my work was very 'design-y', and I am happy to embrace it.

I believe that design should be reclaimed as a Fine Art and not relegated to an area of clip-art and computer filters. I have no issue with working in the area of design and for my work to go from very controlled and designed to vert free and interpretive (although I don't tend to do so much of that!) I really enjoy the kind of graphic art that is found in the best graphic novels and comics as well as the painters of my favourite period in art - the symbolists.

I have tried to give some explanation of the meaning of each work next to it. Some images have a lot of symbolism wound into them and other images are just themes I enjoy and may have no particular meaning behind them apart from them being something i wanted to do at the time...

Contrary to the photo i have used here, I do actually have hair! If you would like to see more of another aspect of me please visit my dance site.