In 1960, my grandmother saw an ad in the Liverpool Echo for holiday cottages in Cornwall.  She replied to the ad, a booking was made, and so the Downderry holidays began…

I first went when I was 7 months old – we went twice a year, a fortnight in May and a fortnight in August – and looking back, it’s like I was always at school, it was Christmas, or we were in Cornwall.  It is a magical place for me; the sea, the sky, the rockpools, looking for lighthouses at night, collecting shells, eating pasties, running on the beach.  The coast from Downderry to Polperro was, and remains, my favourite place in the world.

Most of my family is gone now, but to this day I feel peace and a real sense of belonging as I go over the Tamar Bridge.

My family has always lived in Warrington, working as wire drawers at Rylands, at the shirt works, the tanneries.   I was lucky, was the first to go to university in my family, and then had a career, travelling all over the world.

But covid lockdown did for me.  I was lonely, very scared, and isolated, kept apart from the people and places I love best. 

So I started sewing, just to give me something to do, and to try to calm my mind.  I found that I was making a seascape, a view of the sea and the sky in Downderry; I was sewing what I hoped I’d live to see again.

I work in mathematics, came late to art, and so have had no art training, but I’ve always loved the work of Miro and Rothko.  I sewed free-style, straight to the fabric, I didn’t have a pattern or a plan, I didn’t draw anything or look at photos or search the internet, I just sewed the sea and the sky from memory, the legacy of hours and years of sitting and playing by the sea.

The repetition of the stitching was like the tide in my mind, rhythmic, washing back and to.  I was sewing my memories, and with every needle I threaded I was creating a remembered world for myself, of love and loss and family and belonging and connection and the will to survive, even when you're not sure you're going to make it through.  

It took a long time, there’s about 500,000 stitches in it. 

I had this seascape framed, and an artist suggested I enter it into an art exhibition – it was selected and exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 2024.

It’s called ‘From the Sea View’, because the Sea View was the pub in Downderry when I was a child.  It has a beer garden overlooking the beach and the water, and in my mind’s eye I was sat there in Covid, sewing, recreating the memories of the place and the people I love.

I’ve completed several other pieces – views of sea and sky, scenes from a life lived with Cornwall in my heart.

Perhaps everyone has a place to return to, to remember, to re-connect, to breathe and relax.

These seascapes invite you to my place.