Tell us a little about your work and where you live. 

I work on the high moorlands, the seashores and all places between – trying to capture a sense of place and time in both the big views and the small details. Working in sketchbooks I make visual and written notes. Not everything can be painted, birdsong, a snatch of conversation, the passage of time through the landscape.

Sometimes I paint on the spot and sometimes the sketches are worked up in watercolour, acrylic, inks and charcoal back in my workshop. I produce sketchbooks for publication as well as handmade artists books for galleries and commissions. Teaching has become a large part of my life. There’s nothing to match the ideas and energy in a room of creative people hard at work.. and nothing to match that feeling of a long day in the workshop trying to achieve something close to the picture I have in my head.

How did you start making artists’ books?
I started making books over 20 years ago after meeting Rachel Hazell, a bookbinder.  She came  into my gallery on St Martin’s, Scilly, and we started chatting. Later in the year, she returned to run a bookbinding class for me and some friends. I got hooked from the very first book I made, and have carried on ever since.

My family and I moved to West Cornwall in the late 1970s, growing our own food and keeping goats. That was when I started teaching printmaking at Newlyn School of Art in Penzance, selling my etchings through a London agent. I started making a series of books about places in the West Country after meeting a publisher on St Martin’s. They were a return to the sketchbook habit I learnt at art school; a sideways look at well known places like Penzance and Newlyn. I made a centenary book for the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company and a book about the building of the new Cornwall Records Office: the second of those may sound boring, but I loved working in a huge building site, recording the old brewery buildings being incorporated into a beautiful new building, with lots of scaffolding and men in hard hats and yellow jackets!

Can you tell us a bit about your process?
Bookbinding ranges from traditional techniques to ‘anything goes’!  The materials are very simple: a bone folder, bookbinding thread and needle, craft knife, paper, card, book cloth and good glue. I love to make artists’ books in part, because it gives me a chance to play with papers, shapes and stitches. Whatever book I make, it inevitably includes an interior world of paint, collage, and text. What’s produced becomes a portable and personal art work which takes on its own character. Every book takes on its own character during the making process.

What inspires you in the everyday?
I’m inspired by the landscape and the natural world, the changing seasons; by words, ideas and storytelling.

What do you love about teaching workshops?
I love teaching workshops  because making books is within the reach of anyone. The process is simple and the finished result convinces lots of people who thought they weren’t creative that they are. Bookmaking is a shared activity. Inspiration and ideas are passed around the room, which fills with energy and the hum of conversation. Age doesn’t matter and neither does artistic ability. There’s something so special in the atmosphere of a room of people with hands busy, ideas flowing and chatting and laughter going on. Through all that, beautiful artists books are being made by people who would never call themselves artists. Friendships are made, worries untangled, and problems solved.

What are you working on at the moment?
Lately, I’ve been working on some longer term projects including a large illustrated map and a book created with the Cornwall Heritage Trust as part of the outputs for a year’s residency. On my days off, I play with different book structures using mixed media – which is an arty word for tearing up failed painting and giving them a new life as artists’ books!