My earliest memory connected with painting dates from when I was about 6 and my mother pinned on the wall a picture I had painted at school. It was of a house, with a tree at the side and I'd glued dots of red confetti onto the tree to represent apples. How strange that many decades later, I often use paper collage in combination with water-based paints in my work. By the age of 10 I knew that I wanted to be an artist when I grew up - except for a somewhat self-deluding period when I dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer, even though my physique was totally unsuitable! However, my love of ballet, and dance in all its forms, has infused my painting throughout my life and for that reason I chose to study stage design at the Central School of Art when I left school. Even then, I still went to ballet classes one evening a week for the sheer love of it. Then, for three years in my early 20's I lived in Paris, drawing dancers back-stage and in classes and rehearsals, designing and making costumes as a freelance while studying life-drawing at La Grande Chaumiere. Again, I continued to go to dance classes with emigree Russian teachers. I designed and made costumes for a student performance and, as a result, was commissioned to design a ballet for the Grands Ballets du Marquis de Cuevas. But the ballet never materialised. The young choreographer fell foul of the ballet-mistress and left the company, and the project was shelved. Shattered, I came home to London and worked for one of the leading theatrical costumiers of the day, which was demanding but huge fun - until I was expecting my first child. A theatrical costumiers is no place for a pregnant woman!

Ishvara d'Angelo

I had married a fellow-artist and fondly imagined that we would lead a life of Bohemian bliss, both painting of course. But the demands of motherhood meant that I did not paint for 16 years. However, my years of dance training came into its own, for I began to teach ballet and ran my own school for many years. Naturally, I designed and made costumes for all our school shows which compensated in some measure for not engaging in any easel-painting. But the inner compulsion to paint cannot be ignored for ever, and in my early 40's I took up my brushes again, going to adult education art classes to regain my lost technique.

Sadly, divorce a few years later meant that I had to become the family breadwinner, and I began a second career as an aromatherapist. Before long I was so fully occupied practising, teaching and writing about aromatherapy that painting once again had to take a back seat.

the angel sighting that changed my life

In 1990 I was invited to speak at an aromatherapy conference in Los Angeles. As a Buddhist I seized the opportunity to attend an important teaching that His Holiness the Dalai Lama was to give in California just after the conference. It was an inspiring ten days.

On the flight home, I had an amazing experience that was to change my life forever. I saw an Angel.

In Buddhism there are no Angels. And an Angel is about the last thing that a practising Tibetan Buddhist expects or wishes to see! It has been suggested that I was asleep and dreaming, but even in my dreams I would not have expected to see an Angel at that point in my life, and certainly not after being totally immersed in Tibetan teachings for the previous week or so.

But I saw this great, golden Being sending love and blessings to Planet Earth, and was told "Go home and paint this."

(If you would like to know more about this vision of Uriel, you can read about it in my book "Angels In Our Time".

inspired paintings of angels, fairies & elves

It took me three attempts to capture something of the radiant Being that I saw that day, but after that several more Angels appeared and they became the main subject matter of my paintings. I studied the techniques of earlier Angel-painters, including egg tempera, gilding, Icon painting and fresco, which gave me a glimpse into the minds of those earlier painters. Before this my subjects had ranged from impressionistic still life and landscape to subjects inspired by music, myth and poetry.

Today, twenty years after that first vision, I still paint Angels but also some of my previous subjects such as fairies and themes from myth and poetry, using a variety of techniques including oils, gouache and mixed-media collage. To these techniques I have added ceramic sculpture in the past decade, taught by an inspiring teacher, Lucianne Lassalle, who I met after moving from London to live in Totnes, Devon.