I’ve been a mosaic artist for 10 years, learning with Vanessa Benson at Morley College. It’s a hobby, not a career: most of  you know that my happiest work is coaching, training and consultancy. And more recently supervision (training with Oxford Brookes). 

What I enjoy about mosaics is creating abstract images. This one, ‘Flowers  Emerging’, took 18 months, was shown at the Morley Gallery, and was inspired by a  visit to Edinburgh to see Bruce Munro’s Field of Light with family and friends. It captures the dazzling display of naturally inspired electronic  lights I saw and expresses them as poppy-like mosaic flowers, sparkling images with a background of marble, to hint at the trees and the darkness.

It captures that idea in our lives and our working lives, that we are at our best – these amazing bright lights emerging into the world being the best we can be. This is also what resilience can feel like, persisting with shining our light, even in challenging times, or uncertainty at work, change and adversity.

Mosaic making helps me be inspired and at ease: designing, observing, cutting and placing the marble and glass pieces together, to experience new  ways of looking, to create meaningful and beautiful images. It’s a bit like coaching  and workshops where, through conversation and interaction, we experience new ways of looking. We reconnect with what’s enjoyable, meaningful and even beautiful about us, others, work and life.