Artist Residency at Royal Holloway

I am SO excited to share my giant news with you!...

Alongside my commissioned projects I am now Artist in Residence in the Plant Molecular Sciences Department of Royal Holloway University. This is such a dream project for me, the idea for which began around four years ago and I am so excited to see all those hours of research, planning and dreaming turn into a tangible year long adventure. This residency has been funded by the lovely folk at Ted Baker, and I'm really grateful to them for their support, belief and excitement in the potential of this residency.

Plants have always been my favourite subject and although my drawings echo nature, I enjoy embracing artistic licence by subtly altering the leaves, petals and root structures to create unrealistic versions of well known plants. Drawing offers the powerful opportunity to redesign the world however I choose, and this residency explores the potential of making my unreal botanical drawings come to life. To make these highly personal, altered drawings of plants grow and exist in the real world - exciting eh!

I will be spending one day each week drawing in the laboratory as well as attending lectures, having tutorials, working with a team of students and being mentored by my collaborator Professor Bogre. It is a highly experimental (in the artistic and scientific sense of the word) project and I look forward to sharing the work as I create it!

This week I've been working on a new project for Christmas (which I can't share yet but it's really exciting). I've visited the Jerwood Drawing Prize, the new A S T O N I S H I N G Anselm Keifer exhibition at The Royal Academy and the beautiful Manon at The Royal Opera House - the costumes were incredible!

This week Steve's in New York at The Future of Storytelling so I have a weekend of scrapbooks, sketchbooks, audiobooks and LOTS of learning and research for the residency - why didn't I concentrate in biology at school!? x