Hi everyone!
Thank you so much for signing up for my website and supporting my business Pup Goes The Easel. This website was created, with love, by my eldest daughter, Grace. I am hugely grateful to her. Without her technical skills, guidance, support (and patience) none of this would have been possible.
I thought it would make sense, at the beginning of my ‘website journey’, to introduce myself and explain the creative journey that has got me where I am today. So here goes…
I’ve always been creative but would never have called myself an artist. It seemed a bit surreal when I was approaching my 7th decade to accept that I actually was!
When I was a very young girl, I was introduced to the magical world of yarns through a wonderful little toy called, Knitting Nancy. I spent hours making long knitted sausages and sewing them to make mats. I then progressed to very basic knitting, helped by my mum, and I began to make simple clothes for my Teeny Tiny Tears. It seemed magical that a long piece of yarn could become an item of clothing. As a young teenager, I used to love buying fabrics in local markets and turning them into something to wear. I was a self-taught seamstress. I would find something I already wore and create a pattern from that on newspaper or brown wrapping paper. Then I would set to work with the old Singer sewing machine that was gathering dust in our house! Back in the 70s, in real terms, fabric was cheap and clothes were very expensive.
I also liked the fact that no one else would be wearing what I was wearing – particularly to parties. I used ‘Simplicity’ or ‘Style’ patterns for clothes that I didn’t already own a version of. But what I particularly enjoyed was creating weird and whacky party clothes from my designs – well, it was the end of the 70s and it was the time of Punk and the New Romantics. It was an era that seemed to encourage experimentation. I can vividly remember some extremely ‘baggy trousers’, which I made from an old white bed sheet, onto which I sewed hundreds of large multi-coloured, crescent moon-shaped sequins. I must have been the belle of the ball. Well, I certainly felt like I was and, unsurprisingly, no one else looked quite like me!
For my 16th birthday, my parents bought me a brand new, modern, Frister & Rossmann sewing machine. It was certainly a new era of sewing for me. Who would believe that a machine could sew buttonholes for you? That trusty machine saw heavy use over the preceding decades. As well as making clothes for me, I made my bridesmaids dresses, clothes for my growing family, soft furnishings, bunting and even fancy-dress costumes for various school theme days and shows.
As a young adult, I dabbled with many other crafts. I enjoyed attending workshops run by crafters and being introduced to new and exciting art forms. When I moved to Farnham, from London, in my late 20s, I was spoiled for choice when it came to craft workshops. Farnham is a World Craft Town and is full of talented and creative souls who share their skills with others. I created many different items in mosaics and a few lovely stained-glass panels. I even created garden wigwams, cloches and Christmas stars out of willow after attending some great local workshops.
Once I moved to the beautiful Surrey countryside, I finally felt inspired to put brush to paper. I dabbled with watercolours to begin with. I enjoyed sitting in the shade of an old apple tree and trying to paint my beautiful garden and our lovely home. My eye for perspective wasn’t great and I didn’t have a clue what I was doing but I just gave it a go. Some of my efforts weren’t too bad. But, somehow, I didn’t feel watercolours were my medium.
A few years later, I discovered the joy of acrylic paints. I was immediately attracted to the bold, jewel-like colours and the ease of application this medium afforded. At the time, I was going through a bit of a fascination with Indian and Moorish design, and I loved the vibrant colours that were used. I also felt an affinity with naive art too. It is no surprise, therefore, that one of my first creations was a painting of a town, which, to my mind at least, looked like a fairy-tale Bethlehem. It had pride of place on our walls for many years.
As is always the way, life gets busy when you have a family, a job and a pup. I was also studying, part-time, for an Open University degree in English Literature. So free time was at a premium and the opportunity to feel creative got a bit squeezed. Once my children were a little older and a little more independent, and I had graduated, opportunities for creativity seemed to arise again.
My next acrylic painting was of our family pet, a rescued Lurcher, called Parker. He was my daughter’s birthday present. She was totally into Frida Kahlo at the time and so I decided to capture the spirit of them both by painting a portrait of Parker with a monobrow! You could say that this was the seed from which Pup Goes The Easel sprouted.
Roll on a decade and my daughter moved to Tenerife. It was there that she heard about the plight of hunting dogs on the Canary Islands and became interested in the rescue homes that sheltered and re-homed them. She fell in love with a Podenco puppy, which she adopted and named – yes, you’ve guessed it – ‘Frida’. She also found a tiny, abandoned kitten under a skip outside her home. She took him in and gave him a home too. At this point, my daughter felt the need to capture their essence. So, she commissioned me to paint them too.
In the summer of 2022, my family encouraged me to paint a few more pup breeds, in my own unique and quirky style. I used some of my savings and had them professionally printed as gallery-quality prints and high-quality greeting cards to sell in markets and on Etsy. Pup Goes The Easel was officially launched!
It was an exciting and terrifying moment. Your heart is in your art. You bare your soul to the public when you put your art in front of them. It makes you feel very vulnerable, particularly when you are self-taught and haven’t been trained. I felt like I was an imposter. However, the many positive comments I have received, and the smiles I see when people look at my work, are incredibly uplifting, encouraging and joyful.
I had never run a business before either. So, there was a lot to learn. Social media was new to me and I soon realised that, without it, I would fail. I had to master stock control and spreadsheets too. So, with the help of family and friends, I acquired the skills I needed to enable my business to flourish.
Since then, my product range has increased to include tea towels, tote bags, mugs, notebooks, postcards and button badges. I have been commissioned to paint portraits of pups, both in the UK and abroad. I am stocked in Rainbow Roar, Farnham and in the Petworth Pop-Up Shop, Petworth. I am also available online through Love From Betty. Who knows what 2024 will have in store for me and the pups? One thing is for sure, it will be an exciting and positive experience.
Thank you for joining me at the start of my ‘website journey’ and please spread the word!