montet designs
My teenage years... IMG_20200922_093644_1.jpg were spent hanging out in the
school art department (regardless of what class I was supposed to be in!) and it
was there that Mr Alston, my wonderful art teacher directed and nurtured my love
of art. Studying Art & Design and then Illustration, was a great foundation to
my art career and helped me refine my skills as an artist. But as a naïve
graduate, passionately producing illustrations and trying to make it in the
freelance world - I soon realised it was going to be more difficult that I
thought! I'd been working in Children's Services for 15 years running Youth
Participation Projects, managing a Gypsy Roma Traveller Project and delivering a
provision of services for the most hard to reach communities. This provided me
with the most amazing experiences, as well as allowing me to use my art to
benefit these groups. It's been a wonderful journey of learning and a fantastic
platform in which to build my business. In 2016 I decided it was time to give up
the office job and focus all my time on my community art work. It's been a
brilliant time and I'm delighted that I still have daily experiences of working
with such amazing people, from our wonderfully interesting communities. I hope
that even if it's just in some little way, I am able to make a difference to the
lives of those that I work with, through the medium of visual art. Audrey But
freelancing for a few years whilst volunteering in the community, opened many
new doors and ideas of what I could do with my visual arts. I went on to
complete a degree in Community Arts and continued to work with community groups.
This is where my love of creating art in the community became well and truly
set. My passion for mural painting was formed following the completion of two
large scale mural commissions in Scotland. Then with London calling, I completed
my next 30 metre indoor mural at a special needs adventure playground in
Hackney. In 2007 I was introduced to the medium of mosaic and I just completely
fell in love with it!