Sally began painting 30 years ago. Prior to that she had studied Visual Communication Design at the Wellington Polytechnic (1980) and subsequently worked illustrating books, stamps, animated films (Animus, UK.) and various media in NZ and Britain.

 

"For the past three decades I have been painting NZ landscapes and more recently from the Welsh Borders in Britain, where I have been living and working from my home and studio in the Monnow Valley.

 

I have always been absorbed by the natural world of landscape and countryside. My parents fostered a deep curiosity and love of the natural world and my mother used to take me to art galleries and encouraged me to paint and draw from an early age. As children they took us out at every opportunity to walk and explore into the countryside in Britain where we lived at the time and around the lower North Island coastline when we came to live in Wellington in the 70’s. 

 

Growing up in the British countryside and in NZ, where we also spent school holidays on NZ farms, informed and instilled in me a deep connection to the land and wild places and so I have spent most of my life roaming hills and valleys and water margins and being in nature whenever possible, with an eye to responding to this through drawing and painting. Light and it’s effects is a continuous fascination."

 

Sally first exhibited her Northland Landscape paintings in 1997 at Pakaraka.  In 2019 15 paintings were shown at Ironbridge Fine Arts in Shropshire, UK and more recently several paintings at Crickhowell Art Gallery, Crickhowell, as well as drawings in Chapel Art Gallery, Abergavenny, Wales. She continues to divide her life painting in both New Zealand and Wales.