Twenty years of pages, seven years of students.
Painter first, teacher by accident — it started with one student and a kitchen table, and grew into a studio run from a converted greenhouse in Paddington.
It started with one student and a kitchen table.
A neighbour asked for help with skies. One Tuesday lesson became six, her pages went from muddy to luminous, and the look on her face when the first wash behaved was better than any exhibition I’d hung.
Word got around, and one lesson at the kitchen table became six people wanting the same thing. Seven years later the kitchen table is a proper studio in a converted greenhouse, and the method hasn’t changed: small pages, honest feedback, no ceremony.
Decide less. Look more.
Watercolour is the only medium that keeps painting after you lift the brush. The pigment drifts, the water pools, and the edge you didn’t plan becomes the best thing on the page. My whole method is learning to leave room for that.
So the courses teach decisions, not strokes: how much water, which pigment, where the light lives — then the discipline to stop meddling and let the page finish itself.
Four promises to every student.
The rules the school runs on, whichever course you pick.
Process over product
You’re graded on pages filled, never on frames earned.
Small daily pages
Twenty minutes beats four hours on Sunday — the courses are built that shape.
Honest critique
Kind, specific, and about the page in front of us — never a template reply.
Materials you own
Every lesson works with a starter palette. Nothing is taught that needs a shopping trip.
Pages, not paintings.
A few spreads from the studio and the student wall.
Sky studies
Module two, every course
Landscape pages
From the flagship course
Mixing charts
The starter palette, mapped
Daily prompts
The Sketchbook Habit
Student pages
Marked up and sent back
The greenhouse
Where the classes run
Paint something small today.
Ask about a trial class and see whether the method suits your hand — no obligation, just one page.