My inspiration for art is the natural world.

I paint mainly for pleasure, so it seems logical to me to paint things I like looking at!

People do ask why butterflies? When studying for a Certificate in Biological Recording and identification at Birmingham University. I decided painting butterflies would be a novel way of learning about them. Unlike some lepidopterist I don,t collect butterfly specimens from the wild preferring to “capture” them on paper and camera.
In nature the vividly coloured patterns on the wings of butterflies and moths are made up of a mass of minute coloured scales. In my watercolour paintings I use a stippling technique with a fine brush to create this effect. It is the fine detail and wing shape that separates one butterfly species from another. Each butterfly illustration is life size and takes over ten hours to paint. I use my own photographs and those of museum specimens as references.

I am a volunteer at my local RSPB reserve, so birds are also a regular subject to paint.

Travels over the past decades have taken me several times to the Nepalese Himalayas. Some of my recent paintings have been inspired by these trips