ABOUT
"The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born."
- C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces -
I'm a freelance illustrator who loves to tell visual stories that encourage experiences of longing and embodiment. My work is inspired by women from literature and history, and by the decorative motifs of medieval illuminated manuscripts and the art nouveau period. Having recently completed my masters in Art and Theology at the University of St Andrew's, I continued my exploration of the devotional possibilities of illustration as ITIA's Artist in Residence for the 2021-22 academic year.
Hiraeth (pronounced HEER-eyeth) is a Welsh word with no direct English equivalent. It refers to the deep longing of the soul for a past that it never experienced but feels connected to. It is a homesickness for a world that no longer exists, and perhaps never did. I chose this word to represent my illustration practice because I believe that the experience of longing is a beautiful and important part of being human, and that art can help us to enter more deeply into a fruitful practice of divine longing.