I live with my husband and our three kids in a 1920’s stone house, just a few minutes from the Yorkshire Moors, Bronte Country. When I’m not spending time with my family, I paint.

Without a doubt, my dad has been my main influence. I remember as a little girl, sitting on the step behind him in his studio watching him draw. He was the only critic whose opinion I was ever interested in. My dad never taught me to draw but I guess we have the same eye.

I originally painted with markers on plastic, using a spirit to mix the colors. It had a lovely translucency and smoothness, but the spirit was pretty potent and when I was expecting Wade, my eldest, I decided it might not be the healthiest idea, so I developed a technique as close to my old style as possible, using soft pastels and sponges to mix the colors. I recently discovered an amazing cotton paper, from a Somerset based paper-mill. It’s a perfect surface to work on, allows great depth and strength of color. I’ve more or less done away the colored pencils for now.

Probably those glossy, airbrushed images of the 70’s and 80’s. My dad did a lot of that stuff commercially.

It’s just the way I naturally draw and paint. My pencil sketches are also realistic. Over the years my work has become more stylized and my use of color has matured. I enjoy the challenge of textures. Capturing the delicate transparency of a thin plastic bag, making a cotton shirt appear soft and tactile.

I don’t think about that, fitting in with current trends isn’t my aim. Good work is timeless, regardless of the style.

I’ve always loved photography, it’s a really important part of what I do but I wouldn’t want it to be my main profession. When I take a nice photo I want to paint it.

That isn’t relevant to my personal work which is influenced by entirely different things, I just paint what I like. Yes, the illustrations I did for Charlotte Olympia and Veuve Clicquot were very obviously retro, to suit the brief. It was fun taking the kids down to London to see my illustrations, large format, in Harrods window.

For now, I’m happy with pastel. I like getting to grips with a material – really understanding it and using it in a fresh way. I do love color, maybe it’s to offset the bleakness of a long Yorkshire winter. I tend to take most of my photos through the summer while traveling, then when it’s grey here, I can be in my studio painting more colorful times. Some welcome escapism!

Yeah, that was a while ago. It came out of the blue actually. Darren Firth, founder of We Occupy, contacted me asking if I was up for participating in the project. I painted Hellovon and there was a nice little exhibition at Cosh, London, alongside a book by IdN.

Right now, I’m in the process of organizing limited edition Giclee prints, which will be available on my website soon. I have loads of paintings planned for my ongoing personal project – a mix of subjects, subtly linked with common themes running throughout. Maybe in a year or so I’ll exhibit… and it would be good to publish a book.