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At the age of ten I was obsessed with fairies and all things fantasy. I borrowed all the library books I could find that had stories about fairies and witches, as well as anything on the supernatural and mythical creatures from the children’s non-fiction section. Thirty years on, I can still picture some of those sumptuously illustrated books of fairies.
I went through many reading phases (Babysitter Club books and the like one year, then a Jules Verne phase another year, Tolkien, finally peaking with Jane Austen and Germaine Greer at the end of high school). When I think back to the fairy books, however, I can see the beginning of an aesthetic that shaped my own artwork and writing throughout my youth.
As well as being an avid reader, I also loved to draw. I filled books with drawings of fairies, elves, dragons, illustrating my own writings about the many different types of fairies that lived in our garden. At that age I probably knew that fairies didn’t really exist but in the realm of art and literature, anything is possible. I created pages of delicately drawn fairies, the details of their names and favourite flowers printed underneath in my best handwriting. I can’t remember their names but I do remember this: they were all white and the flowers were straight out of an English country garden.
My father is English and my mother is Hakka Chinese, from Brunei. They met in Brunei in the 1970s when my dad was…
