I work from home in a studio at the top of the house which overlooks the sea and look across to the Borth Monument. The weather changes everyday and I have a huge view of the sky and the wide horizon of the bay.

I went to art school in Manchester when I was young. I was always interested in painting but I didn't want to teach so I left and went to the Channel Islands and worked for a ceramics firm. I used to come to Borth on holiday with my son and eventually moved here in 1968. Later, I went to life classes for ten years at the Arts Centre which was a Saturday morning task for years!

My work is figurative and features people doing something, whether it's standing by the tide or looking out to sea. It's a view I get from the window, especially in the summer when there are a lot of people about. In the winter it's usually deserted apart from solitary figures walking their dogs.

Many artists do landscapes in Wales but I always want to put figures into it. I think it's probably because I was born in Oldham, a totally industrial town, dominated by the cotton mills and crowds of working people.

If I'd been born in Wales I'd probably do landscapes without people and even though I've lived here in Wales for the past thirty years I think that is still why I want to paint people.

I do draw inspiration just from the fact of being in Wales and the culture and everything about Wales. I'm a born Romantic and I love Welsh poetry and the history; the saints, Ynys Enlli (the isle of 1000 saints). I also love all the old stories about the sea, all my paintings feature the sea. I don't work from photographs. It's better to create an atmosphere from feelings and impressions from memory.

Ceredigion Museum, Y Tabernacl Museum of Modern Art Wales, Attic Gallery Swansea, Oriel Washington Penarth and St David's Hall Cardiff.

In October 2006, I will be exhibiting at the Oriel Washington in Penarth. I am hoping to have about 30 paintings ready for then.

Stick at it, enter competitions and face the rejections at the beginning. It's a way of meeting a deadline and it makes you work harder. Enter exhibitions, do it, frame it, don't just throw it away and think it's not good enough. Keep on doing it and eventually you'll be better than you were when you started!

www.murieldelahaye.com
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