But they were both entrepreneurs; my mum wrote children’s cookery books, appeared on early TV cookery programmes, ran our hotel, a catering business, a business making sweets and later on selling ’things in tins’ for company give-aways; Dad set up businesses selling electrical components and later on batteries.
But as it always goes, I was determined not to be like my dad who didn’t seem at all interested in aesthetics or stopping to look at details…I wanted to look at things a lot ( including his brightly coloured reels of wire and strange stripy valves which he was always telling me to put down…)
But as I’ve grown older and had to find a way to make a living from an aesthetic based career, I’ve found that my dad’s straight-forward logic combined with my mum’s love for things and getting distracted is basically how I’ve survived…and now I actually love that I can identify what they’ve both given to me…
So when I met Natasha from Taking a Moment in Time and she told me how passionately she wanted to help people work out a way to earn a living from their own creativity, I understood how important that is…some people have amazing artistic skills, but they don’t have the business brain. Their creativity is all important, but it becomes hard to pay the bills unless you can learn even a little bit of business acumen, and that’s where Natasha comes in…
I wish I had had the opportunity earlier on to have the input from a creative business mind…someone who I knew would understand where I was coming from and yet someone who could push me out of my comfort zone.
I have been working at surviving as an artist for years now, and it would have been nice to be able to confidently fast track some of my ideas in the early days…
Anyway, suffice to say I was so pleased to be able to collaborate with her on a shoot for her website where you’ll be able to find details of workshops and one to ones…
…and started arranging: I always start with more, and end up taking things away to reveal the compositions
( I always enjoyed the ‘Spot the Difference’ pages in Christmas Annuals…the pictures below are all ever so slightly different…)
When I was using the purples, I had added an old bible which had belonged to my Great Grandmother, and when I took out one of the books inside, an old photo of my Granny dressed up as a fairy fell out…
…along with a love poem my Great Grandmother Mabel ( or ‘Mab’ as she had signed it ) had written to my Great Grandfather…
There are more details about Natasha’s workshops here and you can visit her blog here and follow her on Instagram here .
And there is also a Steller Story version here