To provide us with some context, could you start by guiding us through your journey as an artist? What were the initial motivations and moments that shaped you into the artist you are today?

I’ve only ever wanted to be an artist. But an art teacher once told me I wasn’t talented enough to go to art school, and for years I believed him. Life took me into other work, other countries, other versions of myself. Then one day, in Bangkok, I drew a picture for my husband’s birthday—and the floodgates opened.

From that moment, creating became joy, necessity and truth. A six-month intensive painting course with renowned artist and educator Caroline Hulse gave me the courage to silence my inner critics and paint like myself. Since then, I’ve exhibited internationally, won awards, and shown work in prestigious galleries—proving to myself that the only permission I ever needed was my own (Don’t get me wrong, I still do battle with my inner critics, but they are no longer in control).

Your practice is deeply rooted in an interest in people and the layered narratives that influence our identities. What moment or artwork sparked your dedication to exploring these themes?

People are layered stories. We dream, hope, doubt, and love in narrative—it’s how we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. My years listening to patient stories taught me that some truths can’t be spoken, only shown. In my art, I search for those unspoken places, mapping the inner landscapes where identity shifts, overlaps, and hides in plain sight.

You are highly engaged with both external and internal storytelling. What techniques do you employ in your artistic work to bring this concept to life?

My paintings are not representational—they are layered spaces where stories take shape. I begin with a concept, then work in paint, intuitive marks, and collage, balancing control with instinct, accident with intention. The earliest layers hold the foundations: private thoughts, hidden histories, unspoken words. As the piece grows, I add the parts we choose to show the world.

Every mark carries meaning. Like a story, each work has a beginning, middle, and end—yet it’s never truly finished until the viewer steps in. In that moment, my narrative becomes a doorway, and what they find on the other side is their own.

In your most political pieces, you often delve into complex emotional states, using visual tension and symbolic elements to express internal contradictions we all experience. Could you describe how a recent political frustration evolved into one of your abstract works?

Social justice has always been close to my heart—I hold a first-class master’s in Organising for Social and Community Development—and lately, my frustration with political inaction has been building. Watching leaders downplay the climate crisis, inequality, and poverty in the face of overwhelming evidence felt like witnessing cognitive dissonance unfold in real time: the desperate need to keep beliefs and behaviours in harmony, no matter how much the facts contradict them.

The Contradiction emerged from that tension. I painted a hunched figure, heavy with unease, its three crowded heads swirling with thought. Each head represents a force in conflict—long-held beliefs, uncomfortable truths, and the stubborn desire to be “right.” Dark and challenging, the piece refuses to make peace with those contradictions. For me, it was cathartic; for the viewer, I hope it is as unsettling as the realities that inspired it.

Another aspect of your abstract art involves the use of recycled materials and found objects, adding richer texture to your paintings. How do these objects carry their own stories into your work, and what dialogues do they initiate with your paint layers?

Found objects arrive already carrying their own history—textures worn by touch, colours faded by time, marks left by lives they once served. When I bring them into a painting, they don’t simply sit on the surface; they speak. Their pasts weave into my own layers of paint, creating a dialogue between what was and what is becoming.

Sometimes they echo personal memory, sometimes they hold a quiet social commentary on waste, consumerism, or environmental fragility. By recontextualising the discarded, I aim to make the overlooked visible again, giving it new purpose. In my work, these objects are not just materials—they are storytellers, whispering their histories into the fabric of my paintings.

You mentioned that one of your primary aims is to “create space for thought, connection, and sometimes hope—even in the face of uncertainty.” How do you manage the tension between fostering "space for hope" and facing difficult realities honestly?

For me, creating “space for hope” doesn’t mean glossing over the hard truths—it means holding them alongside the possibility of something better. In Forget The Grey Day And The Rain, I wanted to sit with discomfort: the climate crisis, political instability, the quiet fear woven into daily life. The piece invites the viewer to stay with those feelings, to resist the urge to turn away.

But within that stillness, there’s a thread of resilience. Hope here isn’t naïve or saccharine—it’s the quiet conviction that even in the darkest hours, a glimmer remains. My aim is to create work that makes room for that glimmer, a place where people can breathe through uncertainty and believe, however tentatively, that better days can come.

As Artist Ambassador for Mortal & Strong, how do you balance creating art that advocates without becoming overly didactic or losing its emotional impact?

Advocacy in art works best when it invites, rather than instructs. As Artist Ambassador for Mortal & Strong, I aim to speak through symbolism, texture, and metaphor—creating space for the viewer to enter the work and find their own meaning. If I can connect the cause to something universal—love, loss, fear, resilience—it becomes about shared humanity.

I avoid telling people what to think; instead, I pose questions, embrace ambiguity, and sometimes use humour to disarm. For me, authenticity is the anchor—sharing vulnerabilities alongside lived experiences makes the work more human, and therefore more likely to spark empathy. The goal is to leave viewers not with a lecture, but with a feeling they can’t easily shake.

The artist ambassador programme for Mortal and Strong is a vital part of the charity’s mission to incorporate new, artistic ways to shed a spotlight on important health topics, namely inequalities in health. It is the charity’s mission to strive for equity in health, utilising art as a dynamic way for engagement - to invoke thought, invite change and engage users in a medium not previously used - is a key element of what they do. Using the arts has the power to relay information and engage people in a way words alone simply cannot, and can be a powerful way to amplify important messages. 

The charity is young but with a grand vision - to push for health equity by providing equal support for anyone with any health condition. Being a centralised place of support to help people navigate the impact of major health conditions on their lives, as well as support navigating the healthcare system. Their artistic campaigns are vital in focusing on different health inequalities by not only raising awareness of them, but also exploring the issues and working with higher organisations to strive for change. 

Having your work selected for the Venice Biennale in 2024—how has this international platform influenced your approach to addressing global issues like the climate crisis and inequality?

At the Biennale, I was struck by how many voices converged around shared urgencies: extractivism and its scars, the environmental destruction it fuels, and the deep inequalities sustained by capitalism. These aren’t abstract concepts—they are lived realities, shaping our future in ways we can’t ignore.

What inspired me most was the sense of collective intelligence: artists pooling knowledge, skills, and perspectives to confront challenges too vast for any one person. It reminded me that art can be both deeply personal and profoundly communal - seen, felt, and understood in ways that ripple far beyond the gallery walls. That understanding has only deepened my commitment to making work that engages honestly with the climate crisis and inequality, but does so in a way that invites others to stand inside the conversation. My latest project, The Rooted Age, imagines a post-collapse world—one irrevocably altered by climate change. It’s a vision of nature reclaiming the ruins of our technologies and stories, fusing the organic with the artificial in ways that are both haunting and strangely beautiful.

I’m right at the beginning of this journey, watching it unfold in fragments of paint, texture, and myth. If your readers are interested and want to follow along, they will see it take shape piece by piece—each work another shard of a possible future.

From your perspective, how do art and artistic practice act as bridges between global societal, environmental, and political issues and the general public?

Art has the power to make the distant feel close, and the complex feel human. It can translate statistics into stories, data into images, and global crises into something we can feel in our bones. By evoking emotion, it bypasses debate long enough for us to listen—to climate change, to inequality, to voices too often unheard.

It’s also a gathering place. Public installations, collaborative projects, and community-led works create spaces where conversation and reflection can happen, often between people who might never otherwise meet. Art can challenge the narratives we’ve inherited, amplify those at the margins, and offer new ways of seeing the same problem.

In this way, artistic practice becomes a bridge—not only between issues and the public, but between people themselves—fostering the empathy and shared understanding we need if we’re to imagine and build something better.

Lastly, what message would you like to leave for our readers?

If there’s one message I’d leave, it’s that art is both a mirror and a door. It reflects who we are—our stories, our contradictions, our resilience—but it also opens onto what we might yet become. We are living through uncertain, often difficult times, yet within that uncertainty lies the chance to listen differently, to connect more deeply, and to imagine more bravely.

Whether I’m painting about the climate crisis, social justice, or the quiet truths of personal identity, my hope is always the same: to create spaces where people can feel, question, and see themselves reflected in ways they didn’t expect. Because real change—personal or collective—begins when we allow ourselves to be moved.

Learn more about her work here.

Cover image:

Occupied by silence UV by Carol Burns.

All images courtesy of Carol Burns.