My beloved daughter, Talitha, contracted meningitis on Mother’s Day, 2024. We were told we’d lost her several times, but her indomitable spirit and strength of will prevailed. She spent ten weeks in intensive care at Stoke Mandeville, a little time on the wards waiting for rehab, and on 10th July, the day after her 40th birthday, she was transferred to the Bucks Neurorehabilitation Unit at Amersham Hospital, where she has received the best of care.
Talitha has been left totally and permanently blind, and the strokes she suffered as a result of the brain infection have caused her to lose her short term memory. Her friends and family visit her all the time, and to us she remains the loveliest of women.
For the whole of the past year my creative work centred around her, and has been exhibited at Espacio with textiles 2020 (March 2024) and at the Art Pavilion with PRISM (April 2024). Some of the work has also been selected to be shown in other exhibitions.
Art has truly been my therapy.
Still she knows
Sitting alone on Christmas Eve (my choice) I completed this poem about my brave, strong daughter. The photograph used in the print was taken when we sat in the garden at Amersham Hospital, just chatting in the sunshine.
Fragile connections
Inspired by Santiago Ramón y Cajal’s The Beautiful Brain, I reinterpreted four of his intricate drawings of neurons, dendrites, and protons. These vital brain communicators, when damaged, disrupt behaviour. The four textile works highlight the beauty and fragility of these microscopic structures.
After Santiago Ramón y Cajal
This is a hard-covered book with a coptic binding. Fourteen pages contain free motion stitched renderings of Santiago’s drawings, with pieces missing to reflect Talitha’s brain injury.
Stitchings
A letter and two poems, hand stitched over prints. The photographs were taken of Talitha in the garden at the Bucks Neuro Rehab unit, where she’s been cared for, wonderfully, since July 10th 2024. She and I talked about the work – and her input led to Homeward.
The nine little books and storage box which were the basis of Churning, the origami flexigon also shown on this page. For the first nine of the ten weeks Talitha spent in ICU I vented my feelings with paint and text, and then turned these into small caterpillar books. I carried them with my for every one of the 70 or so days she spent in intensive care – so they’re very well handled!
Churning
It took several attempts to make this “book”, based on the nine books I made when Talitha was in intensive care. Here she ‘Churns’ the book while we talk about it. The video and flexagon were displayed at Espacio with textiles2020 in March 2025.
Shell I: etching with chine collé, EV 25. This image was made from a photograph of my daughter just before she had a series of 25 radiotherapy treatments for a brain tumour. The tightness of the image shows how we both felt: constrained and rigid. There is a second series showing how we felt after the treatment.
Shell II: cyanotype with gold leaf and foil, EV 25. This edition was made using the shell that had held my daughter’s head still whilst she underwent 25 days of radiotherapy. They follow an edition of 25 etchings – the image for which is tight and constrained, how we both felt whilst she was undergoing treatment. This series shows the looseness of the tumour shrinking, hopefully to disappear.
Skulls 
Macroadenoma