"I worked freelance for many years, going into local schools and embarking on lots of creative art projects with the children. I taught all sorts, including basic painting and drawing techniques, puppet making, scenery painting, costume design, and making many diverse textile projects. This was all great fun and fitted in well with family life."

Today she works from a dedicated studio in her house, a bright sunny room with two windows either end. Her tools of the trade are, with few exceptions, what you would expect in any artist's repertoire.

"I have a huge collection of fine-haired brushes, pencils and colored crayons and paint of course! I have an old syringe to water down paints, a surgical scalpel and a miniature miter block and saw for making my picture frames."

"Apparently I look quite amusing when I am wearing my magnifying goggles!"

The medium she prefers to work with is acrylics.

"For my paintings I always use acrylic paints because they are so versatile. Watered down they are fine as watercolor, but applied thickly you can achieve the same texture as oils without all the toxic issues that oils have."

"When painting a commissioned portrait, it is sometimes quite hard to achieve a true likeness of an individual. It often requires several attempts before I'm happy with the outcome. Also, although I like 1/12th and 1/24th scales equally, some paintings are not really achievable in 1/24th scale."

It is that same critical eye that allows her to find inspiration for her craft, and she expands her love of art to include a love of nature.

Countryside landscape, all flowers - either wild or cultivated, animals and birds are some of the things that get her creative juices flowing.

Not the kind of person to rest on her laurels, Kay has great plans for the future.
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