People often ask me where my ideas come from and what inspires me. I have thought a lot about that and now here is my long winded answer:
1. Tea towel designs mainly come to me when I am swimming or biking. Not when I am doing an interval set which requires concentration but more a long, slow distance set when my mind can wander. The thing I find funny is that often while swimming I will get an idea that I think is brilliant. When I come home and draw it out I realize it was ridiculous. I am always grateful that I caught the bad idea before I put it out there to the world and suffered the humiliation. For every good idea I would say there are about six bad or mediocre ones.
2. What inspires me: Biking with my daughter Lucy in an elf outfit, my "S" cup from Suzanne, plain digestives by Marks and Sparks, sitting in a library and drawing in the silence, licorice ice cream, an abstract painting filled with different greens, my Barb Campbell colour cups, my Xtracycle cargo bike, my gull friend at work, and Lupin my remarkable dog who loves to ride in the wheelbarrow.
3. What inspires me with painting: an empty Sunday, a tall hot drink and a good podcast or playlist. I can’t listen to a podcast while I am working on the concept of the painting. Only once the lines are down can I start listening to ideas.
4. My last object of major inspiration is a clean kitchen that I did not clean myself! Jody is very good at cleaning after I go to bed at night. He stays up to clean and watch scary movies.