Right from when I was a little girl I loved to draw and make things. My mother was very long suffering and always encouraged my creativity finding me things to use for my various craft projects. I was later able to combine this with my love of fantasy subjects and fortunate to be able to make my career as a fantasy artist. My first jobs were doing designs and commissions for merchandise and publishing companies and as such the art always had to fit a description and set purpose. However as my career progressed I was able to move solely into licensing my art and my own ideas and concepts. This gives much greater creative freedom and a big part of the process is deciding what subject to paint as well as how to achieve the desired look. I find this very rewarding.

I usually sketch my ideas out in pencil on paper and then colour a scan of this on the computer using a graphics tablet and pen. As many of my artworks and designs are licensed on a variety of products this gives greater flexibility if the art needs to be altered to fit different formats.

England certainly is a wonderful country with much history. There are many very old buildings here with medieval or gothic architecture which are great inspiration for designs. I also find animals and natural environments a great source of inspiration and many of my dragons have been inspired by real life creatures. There are many amazing fantasy stories and films that I enjoy and also inspire new art.

I like to paint a wide range of subjects and themes and fantasy is great for giving a scope to do this. One of the recurring themes in my pictures is strong female characters, in control of their own destiny by their strength of mind. I also like to use symbolism within my pictures to express and emotion or sentiment. For example in my Angel Rose painting the sentiment is remembrance. The angel holds a rose with the petals falling and the scene around her of falling leaves suggests that something has passed as she remembers the beauty of a life. People have been drawn to this piece as a symbol of their remembrance of a special someone. With art you can communicate without words, I feed an emotion into a picture by what I paint and then someone looking at it gets one out. That is a really special thing to do.

Yes I give permission for anyone to use my artwork for a tattoo. It is always nice to see how these turn out and the different ways and style to the different tattoo artist use.