I want my paintings to feel like entering another world.

what this place is for

A calm, safe, unhurried place. Somewhere to come and reset after a long day, and to put a thought down without anyone judging where it lands.

For busy minds that need to settle before work. For busy minds that will not settle before sleep. I make the art and the sound for both.

before any of this

I was always making something.

• dream houses, built in The Sims
• a Barbie house cut out of a cardboard box, and clothes to go in it
• paper mâché
• paper dolls
• drawing and painting, in whatever time was left
• a shop run with my best friend, stocked with leaves, sand and shells

So I was creative long before I called myself an artist.

how it began

There wasn’t one moment. It came slowly, out of feelings and the stories underneath them.

I started painting at six. My mother found me an art school. I entered competitions and never won a single one.

Years later, at a point when I was trying to put myself back together, I came back to it — and found that painting was the only thing that could sit me down and hold me there for hours. The more I painted, the better it got, little by little. A brush moving across a canvas takes the weight off a day.

Now painting is how I recognise myself, the way other people recognise themselves in what they wear. What I want is simple: to paint whenever I want, without worrying about money, and to keep making things for people carrying something heavy. I believe art and music can get you through. They got me through.

what I can’t say straight

Sometimes I can’t explain how I feel, but I can show it — in the colours, in the way the paint goes down. Hope, love, memory, and everything I haven’t found the words for.

Art is freedom. Nothing is right, nothing is wrong. Not being judged feels so good.