Parental expectations can shape us in quiet, persistent ways. Sometimes they push; sometimes they pull. In my case, they waited patiently.

My mother was certain of two things: that my brother would become an architect, and that I would become an artist. I accepted neither idea easily. For years, I dodged her certainty, stepping sideways into other worlds instead. I spent long stretches in university libraries, collected degrees, and followed careers that were interesting, absorbing, and intellectually satisfying. Each path felt deliberate, and yet none felt quite final.

Eventually, though, I found myself circling back to what my mother had always seen as my calling. I rented a studio at Cambridge Arts Salon’s Unit 13, and began once more to mould, construct, draw, and paint. This time, there was no sense of obligation or rebellion, only a quiet recognition that some threads, once laid down, are not easily broken.

The work I make now is rooted in concern: for the environment, for the expanding deserts of concrete in our cities, and for the rising tide of plastic in our oceans. These themes recur not out of fashion or alarmism, but from genuine unease. I am not ashamed of my worry that the earth’s ecosystems are under strain. Art, for me, has become a way of holding that concern, of examining it, questioning it, and giving it form.

What follows is a small selection of my work from this period. Each piece is part of an ongoing conversation, between past and present, inheritance and choice, and the world we have built and the one we are still capable of protecting.