I have been happily making drawings and painting for people for as long as I can remember. I always enjoyed making home-made cards for friends depicting caricatures of them with their new babies or in their wedding outfits, and this naturally developed into making larger paintings for people.

For the last few years I have led a double life, running a busy beach cafe in Cornwall during the summer, and then hunkering down to paint throughout the winter. I like to think that the bright happy colours of the Cornish summers crept into my psyche during the manic cafe season, ready to burst onto the page once I stopped serving cappuccinos and cream teas.

Cornwall has been an obvious inspiration for the happy colourful style of my pictures. The narrow twisty lanes, the higgledy piggledy fishing villages and the glorious patchwork fields; all just begging to be painted. In between commissions I work on painting scenes from places I love, usually Cornwall but sometimes France as I like to go there on holiday.

This year I have ‘retired’ from running the cafe and moved to the Essex coast. I now live on Mersea Island which is a wonderful source of inspiration with its fishing smacks, houseboats and big skies. I have also been lucky enough to have been accepted as a member of ABNA – the Association of British Naive Artists. I am hoping to get a collection of Mersea paintings made to exhibit with them next year.