I am a textile artist exploring the relationship between art and spirituality. My work reflects this interest and I come from a long tradition of artists who have addressed the universal issues - hope and suffering, love and loss and soul and salvation. I have been working on tapestries for the last forty years and my work takes the form of wool stitching created on canvas without prior drawing. My work is distinguished by this and by the utilisation of a small palette of colours which I blend and use throughout a themed series of pieces. At the moment I have just finished a series of fifty multimedia pieces using words and images inspired by the idea of the Victorian Sampler - which were sewn by women to show their skills and marriageability. The textile text reflects and comments on the images used and I believe this is a innovative way of working. Although some of the work is intensely personal and uses my own family photographs, letters and children's artwork - this also reflects lifetimes of other families and generations. My more recent pieces use classical works of art juxtaposed with textile text to bring a thought provoking perspective. Other exhibition pieces range from the Lindisfarne Gospels to Miners Banners and pieces using text from T.S.Eliot's Ash Wednesday and The Angelus. I also have produced landscape pieces of Cumberland and Scotland using stitch as a drawing medium. I previously worked professionally in arts management - culminating in Head of the Arts Management Centre at the University of Northumbria. My experience of professional practice and lecturing in arts management informs the efficient management of my art - in theory - though in practice I find the balance of being creative and then managing my work challenging. In the future I hope to continue exhibiting my work in relevant and interesting places. I am also interested in site specific commissions for places of reflection and contemplation. I have also been a member with a disability of the Art House for the last ten years.