About me
Hello, my name is Stevie, and welcome to my website. I come from Worsley, originally in Lancashire, and since 1998 I have been living on the Isle of Wight.
I am an artist, a potter, and I play the piano. I am grateful that the gifts and abilities God has given me are the very things I need to express my feelings, and to pursue the freedom and creativity I aspire to. These three gifts have complimented each other and been used by God to minister to others as well as myself.
I also enjoy walking, and climbing when I get the opportunity, with camera at hand to capture scenes that inspire me. Recently I have been taking photos of birds, wildlife and even butterflies. My camera is the Sony A6600 with the Sony 70 – 350mm zoom lens.
Drawing
Drawing came naturally to me as it did to my mum. She had done many pen drawings, and inspired by her, I also developed an enjoyment and ease in doing many pen drawings.
When drawing with pen I enjoy emphasising the patterns I see in stone walls and paths, and in the bark of trees. For pen drawing I use the technical drawing pens by rotring and faber castell. For pencil drawing my technique is similar to my pen drawings, following contours with cross hatching, a technique used in the drawings of Albrecht Durer and Paul Cadmus:
Painting
Once again, it was watching my mum paint that encouraged me to begin to paint, initially with acrylics. My granddad, in his retirement, also painted, but used oils, a medium I avoided at first. It wasn’t until I was teaching art that I finally began to paint with and appreciate the qualities of oil paints. As an art teacher I soon found myself enjoying painting with the school block paints, similar to gouache. I also sought to master painting with watercolours, as well as dabbling with oil pastels, coloured pencils and airbrush.
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is another skill I spent many hours practising. Years later I created my own calligraphy fonts, which I continue to use in my own publications. The pages below are from my illustrated journal, and include some calligraphy and the calligraphy font I created.
Pottery
I first became captivated by pottery thrown on the potter’s wheel whilst at sixth form college, and although I have only had ‘seasons’ of making pots over the years my love of pottery – of making, collecting and being surrounded by beautiful hand thrown pottery – has never left me.
After completing my A’levels I went to Manchester Polytechnic, taking a BA (Hons) in 3 Dimensional Design, specialising in Ceramics and Jewellery. Alex McErlain, my pottery tutor, arranged during the summer of 1980 for me to spend six weeks gaining some valuable pottery experience with slipware potter Peter Dick at Coxwold Pottery, North Yorkshire. Watching Peter skillfully decorate his pots with a slip trailer in hand left me impressed and with huge respect. In my years of collecting pottery I have not come across any potter with the same level of mastery of slip trailing as Peter had.
Piano
My mum reminded me that, whilst still very young I was drawn to the piano, and so she arranged for me to have piano lessons. To be honest, in the early years of learning to play I didn’t take seriously enough the practice of scales and exercises, preferring instead to devote my time learning to play piano music by Chopin.
Whilst at school I was asked to accompany the choir as well as play solo pieces. I have memories of playing Michael Hurd’s Swinging Samson and his Rooster Rag, which I loved.
Between 1994 – 96 I was asked to arrange and perform the music for five musical cabaret shows, which I did on both keyboard (Yamaha PSR410) and Clavinova piano. The acts included songs by Irvin Berlin and many Jazz standards, including six Nat King Cole songs which I transcribed to create full backing tracks using the programmable features of the Yamaha PSR410 keyboard, leaving the jazz piano part for live performance. I found this amazingly satisfying and rewarding.
I have accompanied instrumentalists (clarinet, violin, viola and saxophone) for exams, and a soprano for a diploma for which she received 100%.
I currently have a Yamaha Clavinova CLP270 and a Kawai ES920.
Teaching
After graduating, I qualified as a teacher of art, and for the next nine years taught art and pottery to 11-18 year olds. Later, in 1996, I began to teach myself to use Adobe Photoshop, initially for my drawings, and Serif Pageplus (a publishing program), to produce calendars and cards. I then replaced Serif Pageplus with Adobe’s Pagemaker, and later with Adobe InDesign, using this to produce various publications.
In 2004 an opportunity came to teach two Magazine publishing courses to adult students. This course led to more courses which included web design, and the use of what was then Macromedia Dreamweaver.
Teaching is something I love. Although learning graphic and web design wasn’t always easy, being able to then pass on my skills to others was tremendously satisfying, and enjoyable.
Design
For many years graphic and web design was the mainstay of my work, and I’m grateful for the skills I have learned, in image editing, publishing and in web design.
Current and future projects
In recent years I’ve needed to scale back the intensity of working in order to focus on my health. However my intention is to return to making pots and painting, but with a greater emphasis on creativity. I currently have a pottery workshop at home, and fire my pots in an 2.65 cu ft top loading electric kiln.
Contact me
Phone: 07704 909 133
Email: [email protected]
Or send a message using this form.