I’m a Nottingham based Pet Portrait artist using pastels on velour paper. I’m completely self-taught other than doing GCSE art many years ago, but I cannot remember a time when I haven’t been painting and drawing.

I grew up in Somerset where the surrounding Exmoor countryside inspired my love of animals. My Dad was a Point-to-Point racehorse trainer and so I was always around horses and other animals.

The first person to inspire me was my primary school art teacher, Mr Stannion, and I could never thank him enough for his encouragement. I'll always remember seeing a drawing he had done of a horse's head and I decided that I wanted to be able to draw like that. From then on I spent hours in my bedroom drawing horses!

In 1995 I moved to Nottingham to study Zoology at Nottingham University and went on to qualify as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG. I then worked for Boots PLC and the Alliance & Leicester as a Senior Finance Manager before having my two children Thomas and Gemma.

Since taking a career break I have started doing pet portrait commissions. I find that people love the realism that can be captured using pastel and my work is in high demand.