happy new year!

I hope you have all had a superb Christmas and New Year. After a house full over Christmas and a couple of days doing nothing much but walking with Peanut and Jess, reading and catching up on Netflix shows, I am raring to go.

Lots is happening this year but the two big events are the Open Studios at the end of May and an exhibition with my old chum Gemma Pearce at my favourite hotel, The Old Coastguard in Mousehole, at the beginning of July. I will let you know nearer the time the dates for both.

I am embracing social media and have started making videos of my working process which are available to watch whenever you like on YouTube and Instagram. I’m going to show how I work from beginning to end, and discuss my methods in more detail as the months go on. ​Click here to subscribe to my YouTube channel.

Alongside the working videos I’ve started exploring the joys of stop motion animation. I have a feeling the characters in my paintings have always wanted to be able to move, and now I’m setting them free!  When I first made one of my seagulls blink, using stop motion animation, it was a revelation and now I’m hooked!

I am tentatively planning on making my children's book Plop! into an animation this year using the weekends to work on it, but we will see…

Watercolour cutouts for stop motion animations