Like most people reading this, I guess I can start with the age old cliché that I remember drawing and painting and being pulled towards being creative from as early as I can remember. Growing up in a tiny village in Cornwall, United Kingdom, and having some amazingly creative and driven people in my close-knit family meant that I got off to a good grounding with my artistic skills. There was always a cake to bake and decorate, or a carnival costume to design and create. It showed me from an early age that there were no limits or rules to being artistic, you just had to give yourself the time and energy to get stuck in.

We moved ‘up north’ when I was nine-years-old to a big town where I continued to follow my artistic path through school, on to college for my A Levels and Foundation, and finally on to a degree course in Fashion and Textile Design in Cheltenham. From the age of about 16 I never actually attempted to draw anything ‘real’. My tutors told me that I couldn’t draw and that I had a fear of colour (anyone who knows