My Story

I grew up with a very strong connection to nature and the elements. In rural Scotland, it takes a lot to deter people from going out for a walk or a bike ride on a daily basis. Bring on the horizontal rain and the biting, icy wind for we are a people brazened with grit.

The exhilaration I felt as a child of walking on frozen ponds just to see, hear, and feel it crack underfoot, progressed into body-boarding grey surf with my family, all of us hollering with the thrill of catching the same wave even on those short, baltic December days. My brother and I didn’t want to get out of the water even when we were turning blue!

As a young adult, this wildly staunch connection with the Scottish landscape took me dry-suit diving in lochs and around coastal islands, and to the peaks of several mountains, sometimes in one day, otherwise known as, ‘bagging munros’.

The standing stone circles in the landscape where we lived were an ever-present reminder that nature was the true ruler of this place, and a cornerstone of our sense of identity.

As well as sharing their deep love and knowledge of nature with me, my highly creative family also encouraged me to become immersed in the vibrant, local Arts scene. I learned to play several instruments, sang in choirs, and performed on stage in musical theatre. Spending as much time as possible in the art, music, and drama departments at school allowed me to play, express myself, and escape into a world of fantasy as life became more serious.

This potent mixture of adventure in both nature and creativity set alight a wanderlust that would take me around the world. By the age of 18, I had picked a country on the world map fastened to my bedroom ceiling, and knowing almost nothing about the world, off I went, touching down on the small Honduran island of Roatan, in the Caribbean.

Self-portrait in front of a burning field. Gozo, Malta, 2015

My studies thereafter in Anthropology and History of Art at the University of Glasgow only fuelled this curiosity for travel and culture. I spent several summers mentoring in Visual Ethnography at an Anthropology field school in Malta and completed a month-long artist residency expedition onboard a sailboat around the Orkney and Shetland Islands of Scotland.

After graduating, I became immersed in the British Art industry, curating exhibitions for a fine art gallery, learning the craft in a framing workshop, and assisting in the studios of Scottish artists Sir Peter Howson OBE and Alexandra [Sandie] Gardner. I also created a research paper exploring inclusive music education as a Research Assistant with the University of Strathclyde.

In 2015, I packed up my Scottish life to travel to Cape Verde off the coast of West Africa to begin training as a professional scuba diver. I spent the next five years working as a scuba instructor and research diver in marine conservation in Saint Martin, Tanzania, Jamaica, Croatia, and Belize. When I wasn’t underwater, I was deep in adventure mode on land, soaking up the cultures in which I found myself and putting my Anthropology skills to the test. 

During this time, I created a photography portfolio of some of the astonishing experiences I was fortunate to have, wrote a book about the year that I lived in Jamaica, and made several sculptures with marine debris.

In early 2020, I fulfilled my ambition of becoming a scientific diver dealing with the Crown-of-Thorns Starfish invasion on the Great Barrier Reef, before getting locked down in Gladstone, Central Queensland when the pandemic finally hit Australia. Around the same time, I had a few terrifying experiences at sea and developed a severe allergy to neoprene, abruptly ending my dive career. Then, out of the blue, I met my partner Jason!

This turning point in my life ignited my creativity. 

In all of the swirling chaos of the time, I rooted myself in my connection with my intuition. Just as I could sense every little twitch of the ocean’s currents, I took heed of the same messages coming through my body - the ‘gut feelings’ of that inner sense of knowing that wants to keep me safe and in alignment with who I truly am, and calls me toward liberation on the path that is meant for me.

By choosing to remain curious and open-minded instead, ‘going with the flow’ instead of constantly erasing and re-doing, I began to gain valuable insight from my subconscious through art that helped me to heal.

To finally taste freedom from a lifetime of struggle with perfectionism, fulfilling social expectations, a rigid discomfort with the twists and turns of life, and the constant harshness of self-judgment.

Intuitive expression meets my need for adventure and play in daily life while nourishing faith in myself, and it’s becoming easier over time to trust this flow like the river trusts its course over the rocks and the tree trusts its roots in great gusts of wind. This is the kind of art-making that I love.

That is the kind of art-making that heals me and sets me free.

Professional development in Expressive Arts Therapy has brought a deeper awareness to my own creative practice, facilitating further healing on a personal level, while also giving me the tools to hold space for community members who are committed to their personal growth. 

My dream is to nurture the health of our community through Expressive Arts so that we can be powerful creators of positive change. In the same vein, I hope that my artworks resonate deeply on a soul level, serving as a steadfast reminder of the pure essence that exists in each of us.