Graduating with a BA(Hons) in 1992, I embarked on my artistic career in earnest in 2001, returning to the canvas to extend and explore my creative side in a deeper, more profound way. Throughout the Media Punch project, work was experimental and many pieces discarded, but for those that endured, an interesting meditative protest evolved. Meanwhile, my profession as a celebrity fashion stylist was becoming monotonous, sorely lacking the travel and learning I craved; so, I quit.

In 2006, my husband and I left our very comfortable first world life to explore, volunteer and embed ourselves in other cultures; a life-style choice that would forever change me. Experiencing so much more of the world directly opened my eyes, now informs how I see and in turn interpret the artistic process. Volunteering in many different ways, from working with exiled Tibetan refugees in India, to teaching in schools and helping in animal shelters all over the world, our most recent efforts focus on ocean science and conservation, a sublime adventure into the weird wonderful world of marine- life that informs my current artistic adventure: Lost Specimens.

I have always been captivated by the macabre of taxidermy and specimens under glass, but becoming a vegetarian and animal rights activist stymied that fascination; objectification of a sentient being for any reason, even scientific research, is a highly problematic symptom of how our culture approaches the natural world. However, traveling through distant lands and discovering exquisite alien flora inspired a way to bring parallel universes into our own, and Lost Specimens was born; intended as a mirror we should hold up to ourselves but also as a way to start a conversation about anthropic reasoning and perhaps even consciousness itself.