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My trusty sketchbook is never far away, whatever I'm working on in the studio. I see it as a free space, with no rules, just for play. It's a testing ground for ideas, colours and shapes. It's also a dumping ground for left over paint and interesting snippets of collage paper that seem too precious to throw away.

 Do you love your sketchbook? Or is yours on the shelf gathering dust, with only  something on the first few pages? I confess I used to start my sketchbooks with grand intentions of filling it completely with marvellous drawings.

My journey with clay began when a potter friend donated a bag of recycled clay for me to 'mess around with'. The tactile hands-on nature of working in clay felt so immediate and new after years of holding paint brushes and other tools to create my art. I loved having a direct impact on the materials with my hands, it felt fresh and exciting (I gave up finger painting years ago!) I also realised that I didn't need a whole heap of expensive gear to get started with clay.

Wow! Amazing creations have emerged during my one day print and collage workshops. Beginners, hobby artists and currently practicing artists working in various fields have embraced this process, with great feedback about how enjoyable this working processes is.

Working this way helps me to focus on perhaps just one or two aspects of my art making at a time which encourages me to take a closer look at what I'm doing, how I am thinking about a particular art element and how I am working to resolve an issue. A series may be about colour, or employment of lines and shapes or often I find myself absorbed in process related investigations, whether that's working in layers or building a surface using glazes or fusing print and collage or m

My artistic journey is ever evolving, my working processes are never static for very long! I have a fear routine and of becoming entrenched in a particular way of working that starts to feel formulaic. I love to find new ways of expressing ideas and concepts, so whilst I consider myself primarily a painter, I am always looking to explore different and more complex ways of art making.