From stressed mess to creative disarray

Taking time to realise that you really do need to leave a job and make some big decisions is extremely daunting. But I made the bold decision to resign this year and never looked back, as they say, life is short and making scary moves might not work but what if it does. My focus was now to create art with no idea of the direction or even my personal style.

Drawing and painting have always been part of my life like lots of children, and I loved to draw. Memories of receiving giant compendiums of crayons, felt tip pens and pencils and colouring books at Christmas, super excited to start using them. Occasionally Mum would come home from work with a ream of paper. That beautiful pile of pristine white paper just waiting for some creation to take up residence.

My love of art continued at school. Our art teacher encouraged us to spend three hours a week practicing, so would diligently draw or paint still life, self portraits and anything else that was my current obsession.

Moving on to deciding what career I might pursue, my dream job at the time was to be a make-up artist. But back in the 80's the 'career advisor' advised me that it was 'very difficult to get into' so should consider something else. And there it was, a change of career already, I was to become a Graphic Designer.

My folks moved to the Isle of Wight right after I finished school and I travelled to Southampton to study Design and moved over in my second year.

Throughout my career I had different roles in design and marketing, studying for various professional exams on the way. Fasttrack to 2019 and I was made redundant after 14 years in my role managing a team providing personalised marketing support, managing re-brands, compliance and regulatory changes for the business. I was excited about the change and moved back to the Isle of Wight to be with my partner in Feb 2020 with a goal of creating an online course to help people build their self-esteem (how I got here is a blog post for another day). Sadly it didn't sell well so looked for new roles, which after the pandemic was challenging. There was a short time in an admin job before finding a role as a project manager. Sadly the project manager role was not for me, I resigned and proceeded to throw myself into creating art.