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I was brought up in a small fishing town in the north-east of Scotland by an atheist mother who loved to sing sacred music. 

She was often moved to tears by the music, but nature, the arts and science were the gods in our house.

I was a prolific child artist, but I was discouraged by a bullying art teacher and eventually I turned to music and performance instead.

   After 25 years of depending on low-paid jobs, I found work helping a friend who made stained glass windows. It wasn't very creative - we did repairs or offered the manual skills to realise customers' own ideas, but I grew fascinated by historical stained glass and dismayed by its disappearance as a figurative,  allegorical art form.  

I decided to develop my painting, sandblasting and engraving skills, to harness the spiritual power of the medium, in order to explore issues of today as I see them, such as climate change, women's rights, addiction and grassroots activism.   My references include bible stories, folklore, tabloid newspaper headlines and personal experiences.  I use stained glass as a language, as they did in the middle ages.

I love the peculiar character of very old, broken windows, which have been repaired many times over the centuries.  They have a particular poignancy which reminds us of our mortality and the fragility of the earth. ​

As a singer-songwriter, I've recorded 10 albums over 30 years and performed internationally.

​For my 2023 solo exhibition at CCA Glasgow, 'Lost Congregation',  I combined large-scale stained glass with 3D sound, film and live performance,  to create a fictional, abandoned rural chapel, haunted by its lost congregation,  to question our relationship with the land and to celebrate the way nature and grassroots activism, such as compost-making, can reclaim abandoned places. 

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I make large architectural installations and small, highly-detailed light boxes, easily wall-hung like glowing paintings. 

Please enquire for a list of available works.

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