email: Penny Holroyde

website: www.cathymaclennan.com

I was born in Zimbabwe and spent most of my early childhood outside, exploring and looking at the amazing plants and trees and a whole host of fascinating creatures such as chameleons, millipedes, ants and snakes. The local African children made art quite naturally as a matter of course. Together, we made paints from natural things found in the garden and beyond – and at the age of six I made my first big artwork – a mural painted on the outside wall of my parent’s very white house. I was thrilled…... they were not!

We came to England when I was eight and although life was not like before, I continued to paint anything and everything. I liked drawing, but paint was, and still is, my favourite medium. As I grew up I painted walls, furniture, paper, wood, rocks, doors and fabrics – anything really. If I didn’t paint, I wrote little stories on old computer paper or on the back of huge weather maps (my father was a meteorologist!) – which I then illustrated and made into small books. They nearly always featured animals and plants and patterns.

As a student, I first studied fashion and textile design – then photography. I have worked in textile design, as a commercial and industrial photographer and in recent years as a mural and trompe l’oeil artist. Commissions include projects in both private houses and commercial buildings.

My first children’s book, Chicky Chicky Chook Chook published by Boxer Books in March 2007, draws on all that I have done before. I am now working on my second book about a very hungry monkey. It is full of monkeys, flora, fauna and fun – and features lots of colourful creatures. I hope to do many more.

I work from my studio at the bottom of the garden. From here, I can see birds and bumble bees and watch the seasons alter the plants and trees.