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From early teenage
My earliest influences were from Japanese, and also Chinese traditions of landscape art and meditation and Islamic calligraphy:

- Mindful practice 'being in the moment' performing spontaneous brush strokes built on disciplined experiment.

- Abstraction and work in black and white.

- Humility in relationship between people and place.

- Creative perspective.

I took a course in Eastern ink painting in 2018 with Peter Cavaciutti starting to learn how to control and work with sumi-e ink.

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Photography with my father and travel documentary

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Photography with my father and travel documentary

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From early teenage
My father was a semi-professional photographer and I loved helping him in his darkroom. Watching images slowly emerge from black sheet of paper was magical. He also experimented a lot with inverted, more abstract images and 'puzzle pictures'.

I started taking my own photographs more seriously during travels for doctoral and post doctoral anthropological research. Then consultancy with development agencies in Africa, Asia and Latin America to record landscapes, people and training workshops.

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1994 RSI. I started working with pictures, diagrams photography and video

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1994 RSI. I started working with pictures, diagrams photography and video

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My pictorial visual communications work was prompted by necessity as a means of reducing my dependence on writing and pc for consultancy work. I started working a lot more with systems mapping, concept diagramming and participatory pictorial methodologies. And using shorthand sketchnotes, photography and video to document my work. This included learning digital diagram software like Inspiration, Mindjet and graphics software like Adobe, Corel and Premiere and Flash.

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A world
where women and men are freed
from all forms of discrimination
so they can realise their full potential as agents for
empowerment, happiness and sustainability
of global humankind.

The GAMEchange family of empowerment methodologies adapt similar tools, facilitation and implementation processes to enable women and men from any background to identify and implement their own individual and collective strategies and communicate these to powerful stakehokders.

The community-led processes are linked with government, private sector and development stakeholders to develop guidelines and create advocacy networks to mainstream empowerment and social justice strategies at the centre of institutional practice and decision-making.

Empowering Enquiry action learning approach integrates and builds on complementarities between

to build produce and communicate information for individual and collective action, institutional change and policy advocacy.

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A world where women and men are freed from all forms of discrimination so they can realise their full potential as agents for empowerment, happiness and sustainability of global humankind. The GAMEchange family of empowerment methodologies adapt similar tools, facilitation and implementation processes to enable women and men from any background to identify and implement their own individual and collective strategies and communicate these to powerful stakehokders.

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I never enjoyed art at school - my best friend and also my mother were much better than me. Our daughter was also exceptionally good at drawing from an early age.

My interest in drawing started in 2005 when our daughter decided she would rather go shopping with friends than go to an art class we had paid for. So, rather than waste the money, I decided to give it a try. I had an inspiring teacher call Zoe who introduced me to lots of new ideas about perspective, selective drawing and negative space. So I started to take more classes in life drawing and basic drawing at our local White House Arts.

The real push came in 2009-2010 as I was recovering from breast cancer and had to take 6 months out from work. Someone suggested I sign up for a degree with OCA to take my mind off immediate concerns.

OCA Painting Certificate 2010-2011 I studied drawing, watercolour and painting with Jim Unsworth and Jan Malascek.

- Exploring mark-making
- Working in different dry and paint media
- Composition, negative space and leading lines
- Colour theory
- Embracing 'happy accidents' and learning from unhappy ones.
- History of art theory and movements.

After the Certificate I continued to take practical classes, but once my health was normal again  it was professionally difficult to justify time out of work for painting, so I switched to Photography and video which had more practical use in consultancy.

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I started an OCA Photography degree with tutors Jesse Alexander and Simon Barber. This gave me much more technical confidence, understanding of documentary narrative and introduced me to many sources of photography inspiration. But I found the amount of pc work difficult with RSI on top of work. So I just continued for personal development, focusing on documentary.

My most formative module was Landscape Photography In 2016  with Jesse Alexander. This introduced me to:
- political theory of landscape, including Edgelands and psychogeography.
- Blurb self-publishing
- different forms of visual narrative: single-image, sequential, time-based and interactive.

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We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

Photography is not, and cannot be an 'objective' art. Although the camera can only capture light bouncing off objects that are in front of the lens, the photographer behind the lens will always be making subjective judgements about:

- what exactly to include in and out of the image and composition

- when to take the image to include what they want in terms of eg action and lighting

- how to take the image eg type of lens, depth of field, shutter speed

Although all the above are affected by technological possibilities and constraints of particular cameras that have changed over time, photographs have always been made in relation to the photographer's subjective purpose for the image:

- feelings about the object (even if photographing cells under a microscope)

- intended communication of those feelings for a particular audience

- subjective reactions of different audiences to the image

The pages in this blog are part of my thinking through of these issues to improve my ability to both see the world in all its variety, and communicate these feelings and perceptions to others. They draw particularly on my work for Photography courses for Open College of the Arts (OCA).

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We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves John Berger, Ways of Seeing Photography is not, and cannot be an 'objective' art.

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I started the Visual Communications degree in 2012 with a clear aim to improve my graphic design skills related to my consultancy in pictorial methodologies.

OCA Book Design Module with Christian Lloyd
encouraged me to:
- explore different global visual cultures, particularly Islamic and African traditions
- think creatively about typography and layout
- experiment with different physical media
- experiment with different types of papers and surfaces
- start to think about narrative
- start to think about marketing and audience.

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2014 - 2021 OCA Illustration degree modules with Christian Lloyd and Emma Powell. These enabled me to continue to improve my drawing and painting skills. I also worked more digitally. Particularly important parts of my visual journey were:

starting to draw from memory

understanding visual hierarchy

experimentation with hybrid media

experimentation with iPad software like Procreate

further work with visual narrative.

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I am fascinated by the way in which the brain tries to make sense of, and see patterns in, apparently random marks and textures. I experiment a lot with different materials and textures that create images in my head as the basis for deeper reflection on possible meanings and narratives.

My 'imaginings' have included work in a range of physical and digital media: Nature/Unnature Landscape Jabberwocky Deliverance Journey Tales from the Edge A future area of my practice and live projects will be to develop more coherent allegorical narratives to link the images.

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I am fascinated by the way in which the brain tries to make sense of, and see patterns in, apparently random marks and textures. I experiment a lot with different materials and textures that create images in my head as the basis for deeper reflection on possible meanings and narratives.

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I decided to take OCA Printmaking modules as part of my Visual Communications degree because I wanted to continue with my earlier interest in art and physical media alongside my digital work - partly because of RSI. This has now become a key part of my practice, working in many different printmaking media, taking practical courses at St Barnabas Press and Curwen Print Studios in Cambridge.

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Moving Image and Animation 2019 - current

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Moving Image and Animation 2019 - current

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I started working with video for my professional work around 2005. More recently I have been particularly interested in possibilities of textless animation as a means of communicating concepts and experiences globally, avoiding the need for translation or literacy.

2019 - 2021 my Visual Research with Emma Powell focused on animation of drawings from workshops I facilitated in communities in Africa and Asia. This research introduced me to:
- different pc and iPad animation software
- different global traditions of animation
- combining multiple animation techniques for documentary animation.
This was supplemented by a period of mentoring by 2D animator Howard Wimshurst. This helped me really understand the animation process, and also introduced me to the professional animation software TVPaint which enables very painterly animation styles and linking different media, particularly when combined with After Effects or Premiere.

2020 Moving Image: animation with Ruth McLennan
Introduced me to:
- underlying principles of animation like 'boil' and 'eye trace'
- stop motion animation
- animation using physical media
- storyboarding and narrative
- many new sources of animation inspiration.

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Cambridge Camera Club: photography technique and audience current

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Cambridge Camera Club: photography technique and audience current

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I joined Cambridge Camera Club in 2016. But started to be much more active in 2020 during Lockdown.

The Digital Techniques sessions introduced me to new Lightroom and Photoshop techniques, and also new software like NikFX and Topal Lab that are now key parts of my Photography practice, and also for digitising and manipulating illustrations and artwork.

The Apertures Critique Sessions are a very good audience for feedback from both a traditional photographic technical perspective and more creative ideas. This has given me more confidence, and also awareness of different reactions from different audiences.

The image above was one of three photographs accepted for the CCC Annual Exhibition in 2021.

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Sketchbooks have been an important part of all my OCA courses.

I have also taken weekend and on-line sketchbook courses with Cambridge-based artist Karen Stamper. These introduced me to many new techniques, and also concertina sketchbooks.

2020 OCA Illustration Sketchbooks personal development course with India Ritchie
Introduced me to:
- incorporating objects into my sketchbooks
- being much more iconoclastic and playful with pages
- using drawing implements and substances from a location to illustrate it.-

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My current Visual Communications practice with tutor James Pyman brings together the different aspects of my work: illustration, photography, printmaking and moving image.

What I found particularly useful in VCAP was the creative processes and prompts to help me experiment with very different approaches to an image. Before deciding exactly how to proceed.

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Image-making is my way of living, experiencing life and discovering new ways of looking at the world around me. Some of my work is political. Some emotionally dark. Other more 'human' work aims to help myself and others laugh and 'look on the bright side of life'. I work in a range of media. The basis is generally photography or sketching and painting from life in natural media or on my iPad. These images may then be collaged as the narrative basis for further development in different drawing, painting or printmaking media, digital software or animation. Some of my work is more experimental and abstract, exploring the range of intentional and accidental effects that can be achieved in different media, then adapting these and pushing the range of styles I can produce in other very different media. I am also interested in different forms of narrative. Some of my images are brought together as books, on-line experiences or moving image. Much of my work has been around journeys and social and political issues in Africa and Asia connected to my professional work as consultant with international development agencies. My current work increasingly focuses on issues nearer to home - the social and environmental challenges we face in Europe and my own responsibilities within that. Alongside my own artistic practice I hope - beyond COVID - to support processes for international collaborative art, photography, video and web communications as part of peoples' own documentation of their lives, building on participatory methodologies I used overseas.

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Image-making is my way of living, experiencing life and discovering new ways of looking at the world around me. Some of my work is political. Some emotionally dark. Other more 'human' work aims to help myself and others laugh and 'look on the bright side of life'.

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Investigating Place: Psychogeography - Colours of Shingle

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Investigating Place: Psychogeography - Colours of Shingle

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OCA short course with Garry Clarkson - private internal view for OCA only.

Provided a framework of derive methodologies that I could work with to introduce some randomness, and also multiple perspectives to my initial documentary work.

Introduced me to Eco-poetry as a possible narrative for that could be interesting even for more conservative readers, and provide a way of saying things that are potentially somewhat provocative to a wider audience.

Introduced me to padlets as an interesting interactive addition to my presentation process.