This painting brings together all my favourite things! I love corsets and this one in pink and blue is covered in both 2D and thick, 3D stickers! The yellow flowers are real, stick-on flowers and just makes the bodice pop! The stickers were choses specifically for their upbeat, happy messages. I wanted the owner of this painting to feel joy every day of their life!

I love fabric mannikins which is also a recurring theme in my work. My mother was a fashion designer and she had one of those adjustable dressmaker stands. As a child I used to watch her put together these most wonderful creations and I wished to be all grown up so I could wear those lacy and chiffon dresses. To me these stands represent my child/ fantasy self - a place where I can imagine being someone else, play with dressing up and embodying a world different to my own! 

In this painting, the lacy skirt is draped over a wire mesh against a magnolia backdrop. I love magnolias and have been painting and drawing them since childhood. It represents beauty, femininity and royalty. In Feng Shui it brings purity and when depicted in paintings represents growth in self-esteem.  Butterflies are a symbol of transformation - a butterfly flying upwards represents transcendence and reaching for a higher aim.

I understand this painting as a coming together not only of all the textures, colours and motifs that I like, but also a marriage of aspects of my childhood that made me who I am - parts of me that may not always have space to breathe, can now live on in this image forever!