A little bit about me and my thoughts on the basic income for artists.I have worked all my life as a professional artist, and I was married to luthier Chris Larkin, who used his hands to create beautiful guitars. He was also an artist. We both worked extremely hard to promote and sell our creations. Chris built his first guitar with basic hand tools in the caravan in which we were also living with 3 children. Due to a lack of space, I worked with watercolours and even managed to sell a few. We accepted that our lives would always be feast or famine, but we also accepted that it was the price of choosing to do what we both loved. Good art often comes from struggle! To be truthful, we had a lot of luck along the way. We met good people, and both of us made great contacts here in Ireland and abroad. The introduction of the internet opened up opportunities for both of us, especially as we were living on a tiny peninsula on the west coast of Ireland. For me, the idea of a basic income for everyone, regardless of one's profession, would be a better way to go. For it is absolutely impossible to choose who is an artist and who isn't, especially when everyone is capable of creating some form of art. If you want to be a high earner, art is perhaps not the right path for you. There is a lot of hype and advice on the internet about making money from your art, but we seem to be forgetting that art comes from your heart and an artist will find a way to create whatever their circumstances.

This is my maternal Grandfather / Robert Paul Briscoe , born in Liverpool , he later moved his family to Hatfield, Yorkshire to run the Ingram Arms. Here he is putting the finishing touches to a copy of a religious painting to be hung in a church in York. A keen gardener, he also loved painting flowers.

The art world is often filled with buzzwords, but one term that doesn’t resonate with me is "emerging artists." The constant calls for "emerging artists" are overwhelming.