A tale of love, challenges, new beginnings.

Here is a tale of love, challenges, new beginnings, hard work and excitement! AKA The Big Girls Pants!

Are you sitting comfortably? Then let’s begin…..

Duncan and Lesley were living 350 miles apart, but through a mutual friend and the power of social media they began to chat. Through these conversations they found that they had much in common; both artists, both with a love of nature and an interest in the metaphysical and above all the same slightly ‘off the wall’ sense of humour! What followed was a series of regular conversations that resulted in much spitting out of coffee and aching stomach and face muscles! The foundations for a lifelong friendship had been laid.

There was more. As we moved through 2020 with all its strange global happenings they found more common ground in their beliefs around what was unfolding in every country of the world. And through these trying times the coffee spitting, side splitting laughter continued and something more than friendship began to grow, well for Lesley anyway!

In 2021 Lesley, working on the theory that life is too short not to grab opportunities, reached for her ‘big girls pants’ and alluded to how she was feeling. She didn’t know how things would go as they both had lives, friends, family in opposite corners of the country but what the heck – nothing ventured, nothing gained! But oh the disappointment as she found that Duncan had plans to move even further away, across the sea no less.

Off he sailed and the sadness that Lesley felt was illogical, having never met apart from via a screen, how could this be? However, a little voice told her that what was meant would come to pass and so it did!

Skipping forward to the autumn of 2021 Lesley needed a holiday, she was to go alone for a much needed rest to her favourite place – North Yorkshire. By happenstance on one of those lengthy online conversations Duncan mentioned he was thinking of going to Yorkshire too! Time once more for Lesley to bring out the ‘big girls pants’. She invited Duncan to share her cottage, after all it was more economical that way. This was the beginning of Wardlow & Grace – artists, friends, partners.

2022 is drawing to a close and what a year it has been for Duncan and Lesley. There has been the excitement of new beginnings in life as in business, they have created our online art gallery, they have relocated to rural Lincolnshire moving away from family and friends has been challenging, they have created a collaborative art project, ‘Perceptions’, that will grow as we enter the new year, they are building a brand new studio, a space to work and invite others to work with us too. Looking back over this first year it is amazing to think of all that has been done, their feet have hardly touched the ground. Their artwork and its influences continue to change and grow as they mentor each other and brainstorm new ideas and ways of working.

‘As we move into 2023, we are looking forward to working on our own and joint projects, we are looking forward to taking our work to a wider audience, Lesley is looking forward to studying an MA in fine art at Falmouth University. The last (almost) 3 years has taught us that you never know what is around the corner in this life, but if we take each day at a time and can continue to love and laugh (and sometimes spit out our coffee) then we shall be rich!’