though it was in my heart from when I was a child, running around through the field behind our house and riding horses over the common. I used to draw and paint and write every day, letting my creative self free with fantasy stories and watercolour painting with my Nan. But then something changed – I went to art school and was told that I needed to be more commercial, more abstract, and less obsessed with the details of things. I was told there that if I wanted to become an illustrator, I had to change everything that mattered to me about art, and focus on ‘what sells.’

So I retaliated and swung in the complete opposite direction. I embarked on an academic career, earning first a BSc in environmental science and then a PhD in soil science. I began to work as a postdoctoral researcher, a lecturer and academic. But something was wrong – I had crippling seasonal affective disorder, leaving me huddling next to a lightbox in the winter months. I was sad, and distant. Work was tough – going from one short contract to another, and I struggled with teaching students topics that I wasn’t really passionate about. When my partner and I had the opportunity to move anywhere in the country and take freelance careers, we took it. We desperately needed the change.