Somehow it’s April. I don’t know where March went, but suddenly it’s April and I have a new exhibition opening next month at Chantry House Gallery. The exhibition opens on Saturday May 20th at 10cm I’m very excited. Last year I spent so long writing the Lost Houses book that very little real painting went on in my studio. I began to feel that maybe I had stage fright; that this lovely room with its large clean desks was too nice for me, and certainly too nice to make a mess in! But once I got started I realised how…

I am very excited that Cliffe Castle Museum in Keighley is showing my Lost Houses exhibition in the upstairs gallery. It opens on Saturday February 11th and will be up til April 23rd. I’m going to be in the museum all day on February 11th and April 1st. My kids love Cliffe Castle. The building itself is almost a Lost House as there’s only half left of what was a fantastically elaborate Industrialist’s grand residence. It used to have stunning glass houses. Now it has a pretty good park. There’s also a wonderful natural history collection (stuffed animals!) and rocks…

I’ve been trying to strike a balance in the studio this month. Mondays and Wednesdays are supposed to be precious, uninterrupted (loud music and no children) PAINTING DAYS! Back in the summer I had a few days on my own in North Yorksire, drawing and planning for an exhibition at Chantry House Gallery this coming Spring. It’s been lovely, after all the work on the book, to get painty again. These are Rievaulx and Fountins Abby. I have plans for some Castle Howard paintings too. Here’s another of Whitby. I spent half term there with my family. I’ve also been…

I’ve been very quiet of late. And I’ve been spending more time in front of a computer screen, and less playing with the inks and beautiful new brushes Rosemary & Co that I bought at Art in Action at the start of the summer. I’ve been busy with the book…. Don’t get excited. This is a blank book provided by the book binder to give me an idea of how it will look. I launched a Kickstarter campaign back in July to part fund the production. I am incredibly grateful to all of you that pledged. It’s meant a great…

When we first moved in to our house, 6 months pregnant with twins and feeling a little green, It suddenly dawned on me what a huge project it was. It’s the kind of house where you strip the woodchip only to find that it’s the only thing holding plaster on the walls. You try to replace a carpet, but find that you need to replace the floor boards first. Oh! And mushrooms growing through the bathroom ceiling. That was a highlight… 6 years on we have done an awful lot. My studio has, up til now, been the spare room…

I’ve been playing these last couple of weeks. I shouldn’t have been – there are things that I should have been doing instead. But i wanted to work this idea through… I met with the retail manager up at The Bronte Parsonage in Haworth a few months ago and we talked about my producing some work inspired by the Bronte home, and by the novels. I had the seed of an idea which I started to work out in little paper maquettes. This is the Parsonage, Wuthering Heights and Wildfell Hall. I’d like to do Thornfield Hall too as Jane…

On Friday January 22nd, we launched the Lost Houses Exhibition at Bankfield Museum. I’d seen this photo some time ago, of the last formal function to be held at Castle Carr (the largest of the lost houses in the exhibition). It is a photo of Ronald Murgatroyd’s 21st Birthday party, taken in the early 1930s. So everyone was invited to dress up for the occasion. And oh my! Didn’t they make the effort? Over 200 people came, almost all of them in full evening dress! This is the Swing Cat’s Trio. They played 1930’s Jazz on fiddle, guitar and tea-chest…

I finished this painting today. The house was called Harrowins and it stood in Queensbury for about 80 years. No one knows exactly where it stood, or exactly when it was demolished. Only that no one, not even the golf club wanted it in the end!   This is the last one of  14 large paintings for my Lost Houses of the South Pennines  exhibition. The installation begins at Bankfield Museum, Halifax, on Tuesday. It opens to the public on Saturday and runs until April 9th. Please come! There’s also am opening party on the Friday (January 22nd). Please email…

Maybe it’s a bit soon to start talking about after Christmas, but I can’t think of much else at the moment. I’ve booked the Jazz trio, Bought the Champagne and I’ve been trying on vintage dresses! I’m planning something a bit different for the opening of this next exhibition, the exhibition being very different to anything I’ve done before: This is Castle Carr, Luddenden Dean – it’s the largest painting in the exhibition. I’ve looked at 10 houses in total. Someone let me borrow this photo. Its the last party to ever take place in the castle before it was…