About & Contact
Hi, I'm Al.
I'm a self-taught printmaker and oil painter with a passion for the natural world. My work celebrates wildlife both extant and extinct.
I believe in quality over quantity. I typically release small collections of originals and runs of limited-edition prints that showcase the tactile mediums that I use. I embrace makers marks, wonky registration and other "imperfections" as things of beauty. The natural world isn't a neat and tidy place and my art reflects that.
I accept private commissions, so if you would like to discuss a project, please do get in touch.
Contact
Please use the contact form if you have any questions about my handmade originals, if you would like to discuss private commissions or licensing of existing images. I aim to respond to all enquiries within 3 working days.
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My story
I grew up in the beautiful Kent countryside, surrounded by animals both wild and domestic. My memories of that time are of big family Sunday lunches, long walks through bluebell woods and rolling hills studded with drowsy oast houses. Being both arty and sciencey, I couldn't work out if I wanted to be an artist, a palaeontologist or a conservationist when I grew up (so naturally I ended up doing none of those things!)
Tragically, we lost my beloved Mum when I was only 10 and that (along with a lot of other challenges in the years that followed) sent me in a downward spiral. In the depths of depression I often turned to art and to Mother Nature for comfort and inspiration. I wasn't good at much in school, but I could draw and paint, so that gave me a sense of purpose. I studied fine art and graphic design up to A-level before studying 3D design at university with a focus on sculpture and product design.
Like many, I had big hopes and dreams after graduating, but faced with the practicalities of survival, I ended up "drifting" pretty aimlessly as a commercial digital artist / motion graphics designer in my 20's and early 30's, mostly working any design jobs I could get to pay the bills (when the jobs paid anything at all). For years I did 5:30 am starts, 3-hour commutes and late night wrap-ups for corporate events, often for clients who thought it was perfectly fine to hurl verbal abuse at me just because they could. My career revolved around London too, which is an amazing city but is just too big and urban for my spirit to thrive in for any length of time.
Mercifully, during those darker times I increasingly found ways and opportunities to produce digital content for better clients and employers including museums, publishers and government agencies, but doing this often alongside my day job still didn't leave much bandwidth for making the kind of art that I really wanted to make.
After so many years of long commutes, hours sat in front of computer screens and feeling creatively stifled, soon after turning 40 I realised I'd just about had enough. I'd lost myself somewhere down the line and I needed a reset.
So I recently took a step back, reoriented my internal compass, and picked up my analogue materials again to start creating art the way I want to: the way I used to when I was a teenage graphic design student dreaming big natural history art dreams. Nowadays I make art to fit my own brief, not a corporate client's. I'm much happier in myself and much more likely to be found hand-printing linocut art, drawing and painting from the comfort of my own home.
My landscape paintings and linocut prints are an ode both to the beautiful Kentish countryside I grew up in and the ancient Wiltshire environment I find myself in now.
I relocated from the beautiful city of Canterbury, Kent to a small town in Wiltshire in 2024 with my then partner and our lucky black cat, Tolly (the real brains behind this operation). My then partner is now my wonderfully supportive husband and our little family has since expanded to include two more cats and our border collie pup, Ralph.
Wiltshire is a mystical county filled with ancient earthworks, white horses carved into the hills and sacred circles of standing stones. I'm a deeply spiritual person and I have enjoyed a renaissance in my art since moving here, fuelled by suddenly finding myself inspired by the natural beauty and ancient energy of my new surroundings.
Whilst I try to capture the beauty and fragility of rural England in some of my work, I also try to turn a mirror on our modern society, which romanticises the countryside on the one hand but exploits it, degrades it and abuses it on the other; from walkers who "escape" to the countryside only to leave litter and dog mess everywhere to industrial-scale non-traditional farming (driven not by farmers but by supermarkets and successive post-war governments of all colours) and ugly "affordable" housing developments that people in rural communities can never hope to afford.
Local inspiration
My art
Having studied drawing and painting in water-based media up to A-level and then 3D design at university, I found linocut printing in 2024 at the grand old age of 41 and started teaching myself oil painting using water-based oil paints just a year later.
Through my wildlife paintings and landscapes I seek to express not only my love of the natural world, but to inspire others to do the same, highlighting the fragility of the world around us and challenging us to reconsider what nature means to us and to re-evaluate our place within it.
I am that girl who never stopped drawing dinosaurs even when the whole world told her to "grow out of it". My palaeoart recreates not only extinct animals, but their environments, climates and lifecycles, underpinned by rigorous research. I still produce my palaeoart using either watercolour pencils or digital painting techniques (which are still painting "by hand" - I just use a tablet and stylus connected to my desktop instead of paintbrushes on paper or canvas) Watercolour pencils were my favourite medium back when I was a teenager, honing my craft, but I stopped using them completely for many years throughout my 20's and early 30's. It was a cathartic, therapeutic and wonderfully affirming experience to return to my favourite medium again in recent years - watercolour pencil provides a perfect balance of precision and fluidity that I find perfect for scientific illustration.
Art, among many other things, can be a tiny act of rebellion. And for me, handmade traditional art today is a revolutionary act against an increasingly mechanised and de-humanised world. I abhor the way automation has long been hailed as a force for good that will make everyone's lives better when it only ever really enriches a small number of normally already wealthy individuals and robs ordinary workers of their jobs (all the while doing nothing to replace them). As A.I. increasingly encroaches on the arts, continuing to make physical artworks proclaims the innate value of human creativity.
Every time I make a new piece of art, I am making a silent statement that affirms my own humanity and that of those who enjoy it. That is why I embrace all the tactile imperfections in the mediums I use as vital elements in my work. These details do not translate neatly to digital prints and record the presence and intention of a human hand.
Education & qualifications
I graduated from the University of Hertfordshire with a 1st class Ba in Model design in 2004 and an Ma in 2007.
I recently returned to uni to achieve my lifelong dream of training to be a palaeontologist (well, sort of). Studying part-time alongside my full-time job, I graduated from the University of Birkbeck in 2024 with a 1st class Bsc in Earth Sciences. I'm proud to say that my final major project even won an undergraduate award from the Palaeontological Association.
Exbitions
02.10.2026 - 11.10.2026: Calne Music & Arts Festival, Wiltshire
02.11.2016 - 07.12.2026: The Big Cat Sanctuary Art competition (Longlisted), Kent
07.2026 - DinoCon Palaeoart exhibition
08.2025 - Made in the Pewsey Vale Summer show
Works on permanent display
Support
You can support my work by following me on social media and signing up to my newsletter (links for all these are in the footer of this site).
You can also support my business directly through little one-off donations via Buy me a coffee. All your support and generous donations are very gratefully received! x