Whilst things are a little bit quiet here on my blog, website and in my social media world it is certainly not the case in my real life! I can be a little all or nothing about posting consistently but for now there is a very good reason and that is that we are moving cross country! Two-hundred miles north as an approximation.

It is something that has been a dream, then a seed of an idea then a possibility for quite a while now and I can’t quite believe it has gone from that to being something that is happening in the next two weeks. Even at the end of 2015 we were still thinking perhaps in the late spring-time but whilst I can often be a master at procrastination I can also (in typical Gemini fashion) be very, very decisive – so when the right house came up, off I travelled on the 2nd of January to view it and now we move in less than two weeks time.

Above are a small selection of photos taken when we went up there as we were beginning to think about moving there someday.

Our reasons for moving are many – I am not a city girl at all – I loved Edinburgh (where I lived up until ten years ago) as it feels very small for a city but Nottingham has never felt very much like home to me and I have longed to be a little bit nearer my family. My husband and I both love history, the sea, castles and have dreamed of living somewhere that has all of that and more besides. With many life changes over the last few years we have come to value time spent together doing the things we love even more than before and as it turns out everything we love to do is not really within driving distance – we just crave the ocean, harbours scenes, countryside and the ability to be travel to inspiring places in a very short space of time. For my artwork and work in general too it is just a dream to soon have all of that inspiration practically on my doorstep. A small market town with the best bookshop in the world, a castle (Hogwarts in another world), the sea but a ten minute drive away and more castles and history but a hop skip and a jump away.

So as you can imagine the packing is well under way and we are living in a castle of cardboard boxes at the moment. I will be working from a much smaller temporary studio at the new house for a while but the plan is to eventually find a place to hire that I can work from and hopefully create the larger, more ambitious work that has been in my imagination for a while now.  So in the meantime I will just be unpacking only the necessaries to keep working till such time as I have a bigger space.

I am so excited to see how living in a new part of Britain will inspire new work – I have a feeling it is going to be life-changing. Of course we will miss friends we have made here so very much – but I think there will be no shortage of visitors after we move – anyone for a holiday in Northumberland?

In the meantime and as soon as we are settled I will be making my current on-line course Drawn to Expression open to self study and I have had quite a few emails recently asking if I will be doing another live session of Unearth Gather Create so I will be announcing dates for that very soon. There will also be a brand new course in the pipeline (I am aiming for late Spring) so I will be sure to keep you updated on all of that. There are also other plans afoot – but all in good time! I have quite a bit more packing to do first!

Once I am settled I plan to resurrect my much neglected Newsletter so if you would like to sign up for updates you can do so here. (scroll down the page for the sign up form).

I have closed my shop (apart from on-line courses which you can still purchase) but will be re-opening in a few weeks with some original artwork that I have been meaning to add for a while.

So whilst things might be a bit quiet for a while, I will see you on the other side …..