The last 18 months of covid restrictions and lockdowns took its toll on my creativity and I found it hard to work in my studio. Instead I created a vegetable garden due to necessity and that has kept me sane during the long months of shielding due to my husbands chest condition.Somehow I seemed blocked but now my artistic creativity is waking up again and I am starting by completing works that have languished in my studio unfinished for over a year. This includes this work in progress, 'Riot in the Garden' number two. Now that I have started I feel a new freedom coming so, watch this space.

Many years ago I bought a lot of large tubes of oil paint in a sale but I have changed over to acrylics in the winter and water based oils in the summer. Those tubes seemed to leer at me from the drawers where they were stored saying "Why don't you use us." Its the dangerous fumes of the solvents involved that has held me back but now I have found an odourless thinners and I'm discovering the joys of oil paints again.Its still a messy business cleaning up after but I'm loving the open working time. My first effort was a trip to my front garden with oils sticks to sketch the wonderful colourful display there.

A kind friend gave me a concertina sketchbook so I thought I would use it whilst on holiday at Calshot in Hampshire where we staying in one of the beach huts. The weather was not of the sun lounging variety for the first week but the skies were amazing. I determined to do a sketch of the view across to the Isle of Wight from the doors of the hut every day we were there.

Its a big day for me as I have clicked the " MAKE LIVE" button for this new site. Its not exactly the nuclear button but all the same it was a bit scary. After three weeks of work and learning lots of things I now have my new site thanks to a lot of help from the lovely support team. There are still a few hidden things I need to do but the bulk of the work is done. Now I need to start work in my studio to produce some fresh paintings using all the lovely pigments I have stored up.

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but in creating this website and blog this old lady dog is learning an awful lot of them. Seeing the two week free trial offer I thought 'why not', but the thing about old dogs is they do learn slowly. This is after all the 21st century, no going back and much as I would like to simply mess about with paint I must enter cyber space. Wish me luck!