My Story

When painting, my intention has never been (and still isn’t) to sell my work. Like many others, the challenges of the lockdown over summer provided encouragement for me to explore my painting and discover where it could lead. I paint when I have time and it’s usually for a reason - a friend or family members birthday. I enjoy creating something with more meaning than a shop bought image; something that I know will make that person smile.

I have always loved art and had the meticulous patience to sit and work at something for a long period of time, so when I discovered watercolours, my style came into its own. I remember the first time I properly tried watercolour painting - it was at Beaford Arts Centre when I was about 14. We had a workshop in botanical watercolour painting and I remember being really chuffed with what I produced (I recently discovered this painting and wondered why I’d been so proud of myself!).

Not choosing art as a GCSE subject was a mistake for me - I think I realised this whilst day dreaming in a History detention one day. This made the transition to A level Art difficult as I hadn’t had the opportunity to learn what was expected in a portfolio. My teachers in sixth form were excellent and kept nudging me in the right direction throughout a rocky AS level (where I decided I wanted to become a metal sculptor), into a much less stressful A2. In A2 Art, everything started to make sense to me - I suddenly realised what my strengths were and played to them. I think I had a dream one night about painting a cabbage and then couldn’t get the idea out of my head - I kept banging on about vegetables to my art teacher and she had to do her best to keep me on track with my current project, ‘windows’.

The time came for the choices of exam projects to be announced and I was still hung up on my cabbages - I was really hoping for one of the choices to be ‘vegetables’ but knew the chances where extremely slim as there were only 3 options. I have never been so excited as when I read the first option on that form - ‘Fruit & Vegetables’. The project was such an enjoyable experience - I just found my absolute favourite subject, media and style, culminating in my 3 A1 veggie paintings.

Somehow, I managed to get into Oxford Brookes University to study Architecture in 2017. I deferred my place until 2018 so that I could go and ‘find myself’ on a gap year which means I’m currently in my third and final year of my undergraduate degree. Studying Architecture, I use art and art skills every single day, whether it’s sketching, drawing, model making, creative thinking - everything I do stems from art. I sometimes manage to combine my passion for watercolour painting with my degree, the only issue being that I have a habit of spending so much time on a piece of work that it negates the point of doing it at all - I’m working on this. I have very limited free time these days, but am painting commissions and cards for my friends and family whenever I do.

The transition from hobby to business has to be entirely credited to my lovely mum Lindsey. She has always been my biggest fan and thinks all of my art is great (even when it really really isn’t). She has set up a brilliant range of products with a fantastic local printing company and has made all the elements of a business out of some of my paintings. She’s the brain behind it all.

If you have got this far, thank you for supporting us and this new, small business.

Jess