Art is in my family. My Great Grandmothers watercolours of little fat mice dressed in cosy country clothes, lounging on a leaf with a lemonade propped on a mushroom are my earliest memories of art hung in the family home
"Start at the top and always clean your brushes" she always used to tell me. 30 years on and I still dont.
My little sisters skill with pen and pencil is astonishing.
Mums eye for designing a room to make each space so perfectly functional yet cosy is amazing.
Nana, well her ability to turn her hand too many mediums is amazing and receiving her birthday and christmas cards is always a highlight.
My Uncle Neils abstract visions fascinated me growing up. His cross stitch art inspired me to try it when I was a teen.
Grandad Johns art is finding bowls, mugs and platters inside the most beautiful bits of wood.
Grandad Bobs in the creation of the most detailed, time consuming maps of our country, all the colours weaving here and there to indicate the rock and soil that lies beneath our feat.
Dad, well, his art is in vegetable growing.
So to hear from my school teacher that I just wasn't artistic did hit me quite hard.
I didn't even get into GCSE art so I must have been bad.
But once I left school and I started travelling I found the time to start to allow my mind to grow. I enjoyed writing again, and creating imagery in words. I still couldn't draw.
I met a gypsy couple who showed me how to paint wagon champhers (now I am a wagon painter I know exactly why they wanted me to learn that skill... there are so many and they are teeedious!)
Later I started travelling with a girl who was a wiz at canal boat art and she showed me that technique .
I painted anything I could find. Old metal buckets I found in the hedges, horseshoes off my ponies hooves, the local pubs coal skuttle, an old metal iron someone wanted livened up.
I even started sculpting wood using a chainsaw, painting scrolls on wagons, flowers on cars, hedgerow scenes on vans.
As I type this out I have green paint under my nails, on my elbows and in my hair because it didn't matter how many time Ouma told me, I'll never start at the top.