I have been drawing and creating art since childhood and always had a pencil or brush in my hands. I am Dutch but went to study art in England as a teenager, where I gained a degree in graphic illustration. Once I had left college I moved to Germany, and I didn't practice my art for quite a long time. Partly the reason for this was that we were on the move a lot and I didn't really feel settled enough to be inspired to paint.

However, since moving into my current beautiful house in the picturesque settings of Kent, the garden of England, I have felt a lot more relaxed and have picked up my art again, and I started taking on portraits commissions locally about 6 years ago. I then set up my website which I designed myself, and it all went from there. I found being on the web was actually a great way to get commissions and make online friends, and I gained quite a few overseas and USA customers & friends, even though I am in Europe and have never met some of them!

Last year I joined the UKCPS, the first UK Coloured Pencil Society, which is modelled on the CPSA, the Colored Pencil Society of America, and this summer we had our first exhibition, in which I had some of my work included. I was thrilled to win one of the major prizes, with my CP painting "Painted Faces": two young girls who had their faces painted by me at a local summer school fete.

Coloured pencils and watercolours are actually my preferred media, but I like to use pastels, oil & acrylics too, and am now also getting interested in doing 3-dimentional sculptures. I am waiting to have my new studio space available soon, and then I intend to experiment a lot more with lesser explored materials.

I love painting local scenes and flowers in watercolour, and have produced a number of miniature litho prints, which I sell in their little wooden frames on eBay. I nearly always have a selection of these on offer and they can be found on