Almost every Tuesday for the last six months, since January 2019, I have been catching a tram down Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, to draw beautiful Victorian buildings on location. It started as a personal passion project to draw the street, and I have to say that I...
A big portion of my ancestry is Irish, so visiting Ireland for the first time was something I was really looking forward to. From sunny (and often not so sunny) Melbourne it was hard to imagine the accents, the brilliant greens, the castles (yay CASTLES!!) and the...
I drew this a couple of months ago. I really enjoyed the process, the experimenting and then playfully adding polka dots just for the fun of it. I never shared it because there was such a mixed reaction from a few people – it is something you either love or hate...
When Beth googled “magical places in Europe” to visit during our big adventure, I noticed a shift in my thinking. It wasn’t just castles that seemed magic, but it was like there was some indefinable sparkle in the air where almost anything seemed...
It’s a bit rough when you are just trying to support your teenage daughter’s future as a pastry chef and she bans you from touching the chocolate brownies that are sitting on the bench. Especially when she has just called for help in setting up a brownie...
Six weeks into our European adventure I started my second sketchbook – a huge achievement for me as I have never filled a sketchbook so fast – or at all really, if I am honest! It was a bit tricky getting used to the skinny, wide landscape format of the...
Ok, so my Strathmore mixed media journal isn’t really made of gold, but the metallic paints meandering over the cover and the gold edges inspired by illuminated manuscripts have given it something of a reputation as a golden sketchbook. This was the first...
“Castle!” calls my daughter from the back seat as we round the bend in the highway. It is our third day in England and we still can’t believe that castles and medieval churches seem to pop up on the landscape every few minutes, interspersed by Tudor buildings and...
My mum was a very keen genealogist, and long before the internet she spent years researching our family history in person, gathering birth and death certificates, visiting cemeteries, hand searching shipping records and writing letters to potential relatives. It was a...
I figure that I am spiritually about 10% Dutch. I lived in Holland for six of the first ten years of my life, and I have wonderful memories of that time – memories that have been soaking back into my veins and reclaiming my soul since the minute we stepped on a KLM...
As I type this I’m looking out over the English countryside and a historic village dating back to 1176. To some people that may not sound like much, but as a Melbourne girl I can’t believe I’m sitting here with this view in front of me. It is simply magical. For at...
[This is not a new story of mine by any means, but I am gradually trying to explain the reasons for my artwork that have been made into prints on Etsy. Looking back, this story still holds true. There are always things I wish I could “fix” in lots of areas...
