I didn't pick up a paintbrush until I was 52, shortly before my mother died. It felt as though she handed me her torch, and I've been painting ever since.

Before that, I built businesses, wrote books, raised a family and spent years helping people navigate change. My paintings come from all of it: the joy, the grief, the menopause, the reinvention, the particular ache of the in-between.

I paint instinctively. Music on, paint down, following the feeling rather than a plan. I want my work to hit you in the gut, change the way you breathe, and create that unmistakable moment when you look at a painting and know, without question: she's mine.

My collectors are women at midlife and beyond who have lived enough to recognise something in the work. They don't choose a painting because it matches the sofa. They choose it because they've been through the fires of midlife and a part of them wants to be reclaimed.

I donate 10% from every original painting sale to The Hunger Project, because one woman choosing something beautiful for herself can create possibility for other women too.