Artists : Jenny Arthur

I was born on the Isle of Sheppey (not an exotic kind of island, but the kind that sits in the Thames Estuary). As soon as I had grown and mastered the challenges of the supermarket checkout and frozen pie factory, I was confident to move on to study a foundation course at the Kent Institute of Art and Design at Canterbury and then a degree in graphic design/illustration at The Norwich School of Art and Design.

Alas there wasn’t much call for creative pasty making on the island, so I moved to London and found refuge in a bookshop for several years. I immediately felt at home running busy children’s sections and was lucky to have free rein designing posters and window displays as I climbed to assistant manager. Book buying led to greetings card and wrap buying whilst developing my own projects.

My creative jobs have since included the creation of the (not so) Scary Monsters for The Monster Factory and their development from greetings cards into novelty children’s books, plush toys, figurines, 7ft costumes and a Christmas window display for Galeries Lafayette, Paris. Other clients include Caterpillar Books, Scholastic Children’s Books, Hodder Children’s Books/Hachette, Meadowside Children’s Books, QED Publishing and Parragon.

I give thanks to inspiring art teachers, Tony Hart, Rolf Harris, Sesame Street and The Muppets for my earliest creative influences, and also the wildlife guides and Disney encyclopedias that I spent hours copying pictures from. The countless craft kits containing raffia, plaster of paris and gloopy poster paints that my parents supplied me with also played an important part.

I still harbour a fascination with wildlife and children’s entertainment media and continue to make a mean pasty. I am also partial to a bit of knitting, crocheting, gardening and can often be heard by my neighbour strumming on a ukulele and singing (but not in a professional kind of way, more an X-Factor reject kind of way).