. this is my last watercolour when I was doing my PhD. I used to make myself paint four or five segments each night after work but got bored with it, stopped, and never painted in watercolour again.

. …my Mum and Dad bought me a starter pack of oil paints, so I began to mess around with them and have a go. This is the first canvas I ever did and as you can see, I used the paint very like the way I did watercolour – mix the colour I wanted and fill it in. I suppose you could say it was oil paint by numbers! I ended up selling this work in an exhibition in Melbourne where I was working as a postdoc in the neuropharmacology lab at Melbourne Uni in 2007.

. I always put on a smile at work, never mentioning the struggle with my injury or my trying for a baby. I finally got pregnant and had a miscarriage. I was sick of putting on a front so had pictures taken - it sums up the grim reality of how I was feeling. I painted through IVF, pregnancy, birth and as he changed from being completely dependent to an inquisitive little toddler! This canvas sums up the time, worry, suspense and joy that my little boy has brought to me over the last three years.