Poppies in a Vase Painting

I was born in the Finnish lake district but moved to the UK after gaining my Master's Degree in Fashion Design in the early 90's. My passion for painting and drawing stems from my childhood - I started painting around the age of three. My Nordic heritage gave me love of light and texture, alongside a belief in freedom of expression - I don't follow any particular rules when creating new art. My artistic inspiration has always been Van Gogh, closely followed by his contemporaries Gaugain and Toulouse-Lautrec; their subject matter, colours and composition are endlessly fascinating to me. I am also interested in the quirky work of El Greco and in general, any primitive/naive painters. Whilst I have used a variety of mediums for art, I currently prefer acrylics, charcoal and ink with some elements of water soluble colour blocks and sometimes even biro on smaller works. This allows me to work on building texture and colour on large (A1) scale with a variety of markings. I usually paint of paper or card, with some works utilising metallic inks or metallic card. My work tends to be conversational stories of people or still life studies of flowers and these can be delivered unframed, framed or mounted. A wide white mount brings out the colours on my works best, with simple black narrow frame or statement frame to finish.