I have painted watercolour for a long time, I remember joining classes around the millennium at which time I was involved in running a craft group called Made Specially.  At this time I wanted to paint for myself, it was a relaxing hobby and I did a little teaching of watercolour techniques and encaustic art to the craft class but it was not something I ever dreamed of doing, I wasn’t good enough or so I thought…  I was the academic one, my mother and sister were the creative types.
So I started a degree… that’s what academic types do, learning and giving myself a challenge was what I needed, what I loved.  I was interested in music and wanted to understand how it worked so I started a Humanities Degree where I learnt to analyse music and have a thorough understanding of it. So with the Open University I studied music, I really enjoyed it but needed further modules for my degree, I had always written poetry and decided to finish my degree with creative writing and I loved it.  I found I was way better at creative writing than music, what I enjoyed most was how it increased my creativity.  There were lots of exercises to free you up and help you observe whilst giving information on technique and form.
I got my degree a BA Hons Humanities with Music and Creative Writing and thought, now I have time to paint.  I joined a watercolour class with Sue Chatterton (she runs a watercolour class in our village) and I started to paint… a lot… I found that despite not having painted much during my degree that somehow I had improved, I was curious as to why and realised that lots of the creative activities I had been doing in the writing course were relevant to the art and my observation had also improved.  I was very excited by this and started to experiment, doing lots of research using new materials and matching compositions to them, as with the music there was a lot to understand.  I started to paint with acrylic and to collect water based media.
Time has moved on and I now run two classes and monthly workshops together with two painting holidays this year, I also do commissions for people (in my spare time!).  My art classes and workshops focus on the use of different materials but I also teach theory such as colour and tonal value and the techniques / mediums you might use in order to paint effectively - the emphasis in my class is learning how to create in your own way, to find your style and your mediums of choice.  The painting holidays are focused on a whole picture from sketching through to a full painting in the medium of your choice.
I am loving the journey... there is always something new!