After completing a foundation course in art at Brighton, I started illustrating professionally while still at art college studying Pure Illustration at Harrow. My first commercial illustration job was for Grants of St James’s Wine Diary, which I continued to do illustrations for throughout my college days. I was already fascinated with architecture and had a natural affinity to working with gouache and watercolour. While still at art college I won Highly Commended in the Benson & Hedges Illustrators Gold Awards for an editorial illustration called The Rewards of Friendship, which was exhibited at Hamiltons Gallery, Mayfair. Immediately after leaving art college I joined a group of other Harrow students in an exhibition we called Curious Pupils at the Olivier Gallery in the Festival Hall on London's Southbank. I sold my first painting there!

Early clients for me as a freelance illustrator included CDP (Collett Dickinson & Pearce) Advertising agency, Longmans Publishing and Conran Design. In 1984 I was invited to join David Judd Associates, then the largest privately owned design company in Europe. By 1986 I became head of the Illustration team at the newly renamed DJPA International having learned to visualise and to adapt my illustrations to work in any medium or style. In 1993 I went freelance again and focused on my first love, architecture and watercolours.

In 2001 I moved out of London to continue illustration and also began to explore painting en plein air in the landscapes of Wales and Sussex. I have exhibited with the Royal Watercolour Society at Bankside Gallery London and with the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolour and the Society of Women Artists, both at the Mall Galleries and continue to enjoy my practices of illustration and painting side by side. I have been enjoying teaching too from my studio in an old farmyard in East Sussex, which also became Vision Gallery, where I curated a series of successful exhibitions with work by up to 12 other artists and makers. Please check out my other website for information at www.vision-gallery.co.uk

If you would like to buy any of my paintings or prints please go to www.vision-gallery.co.uk which is now a virtual gallery for sales of my paintings, prints and other gallery stock such as jewellery. I am not so good at keeping the website up to date so if you would like to enquire about anything, please phone or email me: lizhankins@gmail.com