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!