So today marks the start of a new venture for me.

I started this website back in 2017 with the prime purpose of boosting my confidence and to get over my anxiety of sharing my work. I have drawn and sketched for years. Attended life drawing classes, various art workshops and a fair few online courses but most of those works were simply stored away in sketchbooks on the book shelves of what was our box room, filled to the brim with my art supplies.

Rag Tag Magpie was a way for me to get comfortable with sharing my artwork and also was a framework to get me into a daily art routine. The challenge to create and post each day was, well just that, a challenge but over the years has now become a habit and one I feel so much better for. In fact, when I don’t draw or paint I now feel slightly out of kilter, so the site definitely served it’s purpose.

But over the past 12 months I have been spending a lot of time painting. Sparked in part by attending a weeks painting course at the Leith School of Art summer school, but also by our house move, which has given me a big space to have a studio and the enforced lockdown that we’ve all had to experience whilst the world tries to stop this deadly pandemic. The lockdown for me meant no more travelling back and forward between Newcastle and Birmingham, instead our home office became my workplace.

So having given away lot of paintings to family and friends I thought it was about time I set myself up properly to sell some of my art and for that reason I asked my husband to rebuild my website with a move away from a sketcher’s to an artist’s site.

It will be difficult to break the habit of posting each day and I will continue with my sketchbook habit (many of which will be shared in the sketchbook section of the site) but the main focus of the site is now my paintings.

I wanted to say a big “thank you“ to everyone who has liked and commented on my sketches over the years. I will continue to write blog posts but probably not on a daily basis and I do now have a mailing list if you want to sign up (apologies to those who signed up previously as I never quite got round to writing and sending any newsletters!). If you have time check out my new website, I’d love to hear what you think of it and what you think of my work.

One thing I’m certain of, is that change happens for a reason.