Mine has four paws, a big heart, and a way of making every day better. ❤️

Every year this exhibition fills my creative cup, but this year felt extra special. 🙌🏻💜 The work on display was outstanding. Every room was bursting with imagination, bold ideas, quiet moments and artists brave enough to share a little piece of themselves with the world. It reminded me that there isn’t just one way to be creative. And… we finally did it! We brought a little piece of the art ! It will be posted to me so I will share it as soon as it arrives. 🥹 Owning a piece of original art from the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition feels incredibly special, and I can’t wait to find the perfect place for it. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to wander through one of the biggest open-submission exhibitions in the world, come along with me. I hope this little trip leaves you feeling as inspired as I did. 💜 Grab a cuppa, press play, and let’s spend a little time surrounded by creativity. https://youtu.be/tymtMAIijhA?is=-jjPjsm4HPl1qpFD

My friend is alive but ..... there is a part of me that wishes he wasn't. He had a terrible motorcycle accident on Sunday. He's 73 and rides his motorcycle A LOT! He has over 350,000 miles on the bike (named Boomer). This accident caused by another driver, not fault of his own. It happens. Not being seen by motorcyclists is something that is relatively common. This accent has left him very broken and in a state that could be..... vegetative. We don't know yet. His body is broken. Shatter pelvis, shattered wrist. Bleeding and swelling in the brain. So I am grieving. We used to be partners. We dated for 2 years. We did not end our relationship badly, we just wanted different things. We have remained friends. I am grieving someone who is still alive. These pics are from our many cross country road trips in 2012 and 2013.

Why I Created The Lantern Room. 🥰 People often ask me why grief feels so important to me. I think it’s important that I tell some of my story for context 🥰🌱🏮 The truth is, grief has been woven through my life from a very young age. On my thirteenth birthday, my mum married her second husband. Just a month later, he died. None of us knew that years of alcoholism had caused so much damage to his body. Within weeks of their wedding, he was in hospital. His leg had to be amputated, but it was too late. A blood clot travelled to his heart, and he died. Overnight, my mum became a widow. I was just thirteen. What followed shaped me in ways I wouldn’t understand for many years. I found myself carrying responsibilities no child should ever have to carry. I helped organise the funeral and was expected to be the strong one, supporting the adults around me while trying to make sense of my own grief. I was taken to view his body because I was told I was needed. It was an experience that stayed with me long after everyone else had moved on. Just over a year later, my mum remarried and moved to Spain, shortly before my sixteenth birthday. It was another profound loss, and one that left me navigating much of my teenage life on my own. By the time I was sixteen, I was already working in care. Not long afterwards, I was offered a role on a palliative care unit. Looking back now, it feels as though all those difficult experiences had quietly prepared me to sit beside people during the hardest moments of their lives. It became work that I loved deeply. Grief, however, continued to find me. My sister died at just thirty-six from alcoholism, leaving behind her teenage daughter. The grandfather who had always made me feel loved passed away, and I wasn’t told until after he had been cremated. Then, years later, my mum’s third husband died suddenly while they were living in Spain. At eighteen years old, six months pregnant, I flew to another country to organise another funeral. It felt as though I had stepped back into the same role I had been given as a child.

Today Holly and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and honestly… it never disappoints. 🙌🏻❤️ Every year I leave with a sketchbook full of ideas, a head buzzing with inspiration and a heart that somehow feels a little fuller. But this year felt different. For years I’ve entered work into the exhibition and, year after year, received the same email saying I hadn’t been selected. It would have been easy to let that convince me I didn’t belong. Instead, something unexpected happened. Over the last couple of years I’ve stopped trying to fit myself into one creative box. I’ve realised I don’t just love painting. I love printmaking, illustration, photography, writing, bookbinding, murals, theatre, sketchbooks… I simply love making things. ❤️🎨 Walking through those galleries today, surrounded by every imaginable medium, style and voice, I realised that perhaps belonging isn’t about having your work on the wall. It’s about finding a place that celebrates curiosity. ✨ The Royal Academy reminds me that art doesn’t have to look one particular way. It can be loud or quiet, polished or wonderfully imperfect. It can ask questions rather than give answers. So I left inspired, not because I compared myself to the artists on the walls, but because I was reminded that creativity is vast… and there’s room for all of us in it. I took lots of film so I have lots of editing to do 🙈 Keep making. Keep exploring. Keep being curious. You never know where that curiosity might lead. ❤️