Background
I was educated in dance and theatre at the Arts Educational Schools where drawing and painting were important and imaginatively taught. With this background in movement, I was always interested in an art which expresses the spiritual through the physical, the sublime through the earthly. Seeing the prehistoric animals at Lascaux was an inspiration for life. I studied at St Albans, under Norman Adams, and the Slade School of Fine Art with William Coldstream, afterwards living in Rome, studying and working from the Italian masters.

My paintings are based on observation, largely of people within and responding to their own environments. Portraiture has always been a part of that. My first commission was for a BBC film in the Everyman series in 1977. Teaching in schools in London and Wiltshire, latterly at Swindon School of Art and Design for eighteen years, was combined with family life. Although raising five children in addition to the art school teaching left little time in earlier years to build up work for exhibitions or other projects, I have shown at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. For many years (until its recent closure), my work was represented by the New Grafton Portrait Centre, introducing me to a wide range of sitters. I have had two solo shows in Marlborough and shown in numerous mixed exhibitions. When I left teaching in 1995 portraiture finally came to the fore, with an increasing number of commissions in Scotland, where my painter ancestor, the 'Glasgow Boy' Sir James Guthrie PRSA, was a distinguished figure who specialised in portraiture.

Over 120 public and private commissions since 1995.
New Grafton Portrait Centre exhibition, 2005
Portrait of Sir Michael Atiyah PRSE, for the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2007
Study for the above bought by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 2007

Working Practice
The size of my portraits has steadily increased from small and intimate to substantial and life-size works for public spaces. But though it is exciting to work on a large scale I also enjoy returning to an intimate study such as a child's head, and with group portraits I am often glad of my mixed experience of professional and family life. The core character of the individual, revealed in exact shape and gesture, and the disposition of this on the canvas are endlessly challenging and intriguing. I like to develop an understanding with my sitter as we work together. This is not generally found to be intrusive, indeed can be enjoyable on both sides, leading to friendship.

My portraits are in oil, taking around ten sittings for a half-length portrait, plus preparatory meeting and planning sessions. I usually paint people in their own environments to which I am happy to travel. For more information go to Commissioning a Portrait or Contact me.

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