I am a contemporary oil painter specialising in still life food and floral paintings. My work is inspired by the colour and beauty of the natural world around me in Worcestershire and the Cotswolds. I am currently Artist in Residence at Spetchley Park Gardens near Worcester. I studied Fine Art at Worcester University and oil painting at Malvern Hills College and the Norfolk Painting School. I have exhibited widely in the UK, including the Mall Galleries in London and I have also had solo exhibitions at Worcester and Carlisle Cathedrals, and Spetchley Park. Why still life? We live in a fast moving society bombarded with visual imagery and communication. I believe that a still life painting can help us regain the capacity to be still, gaze and wonder. My subjects are the stuff of everyday life – an egg, a flower, a piece of fruit, an isolated pot discarded in a charity shop. For me the ordinary can be extraordinary it is just a matter of looking. From each ordinary object an idea slowly develops into a painting composition, which, like a musical composition, brings together colour, rhythm and pattern. The use of light, reflective surfaces, or even gold leaf in my paintings brings the composition alive.