"Becoming started with a collection of beaded necklaces made by Natalie Marie Jewellery. Each one carried a different stone, Angelite, Mountain Jade, Smoky Quartz, and Dalmatian Jasper. I was drawn to their colours and the weight of them on my skin, cool at first, then warm with wear, like they were quietly alive. I wore them as I painted.

The process became a kind of dialogue between the body and the material, the feeling of the stones translating through my hands, through colour, through silk. I wasn’t trying to paint the necklaces themselves, but the energy that moved through them.

Each work holds the mood of the stones. The sky-like stillness of Angelite, the grounded green of Mountain Jade, the soft fire of Smoky Quartz and the playfulness of Dalmatian Jasper. Across the paintings the colour shifts as living language, from sky blues and misted greys, to mist and ochre, to the deeper, smoke-warm browns that give way to playful red and cream. The pigment on silk pools, bleeds and glows, mirroring the subtle way energy travels through skin, fabric and air.

The paintings move through a cycle, breath in, breath out. Sky to earth, heat to rest, shadow to light.

Becoming is about the experience of colour as presence. The paintings are about how something invisible begins to take form. How what we feel becomes something we can see, touch, and live inside." - Loralee Jade.

How did you find your way to painting? Was it an immediate artistic attraction or has it been an evolving passion?

I started painting in high school. I had an art teacher who really took me under her wing and didn’t just teach technique, she showed me what it means to live with a practice, to make art part of the way you move through the world. That happened right as my dad passed away suddenly, so she became a kind of guide while I was trying to navigate teenage years and enormous grief. Painting has been a constant ever since, not just something I do, but something that has held me through every chapter.


What drew you to collaborate with Natalie Marie Jewellery on this Artist in Residence collection?

What drew me in was the alignment in values. Natalie Marie Jewellery struck me as a brand that treats jewellery the way I treat painting, not as decoration, but as something with intention, weight and story. When the opportunity came up, it felt like a rare brand relationship that wouldn’t require me to contort myself or dilute the work. I was especially interested in the idea of making paintings in conversation with objects that are designed to be held close to the body, to see whether that quiet ritual of adornment could translate into mark-making. It felt like a collaboration rooted in shared philosophy rather than pure aesthetics or trend, which is why I said yes.

Our new gemstones represent four mantras we will be carrying into the new year - clarity, transformation, grounding and self-belief. Which of these resonated with you, and where the end of this year finds you?

Self-belief is the one that rings loudest for me right now. As a single mum and an artist, trusting my own voice isn’t optional, it’s the thing that lets me keep moving forward even when there’s no clear map. The end of this year has me really thinking about belonging, not external belonging, but the kind where you settle into your own life and say, “this is mine.” In the studio that’s looked like making work that feels like a kind of homecoming, a reminder that I’m allowed to back myself. And actually when I do, everything flows freely. So going into the new year, self-belief feels less like a goal and more like a posture I’m choosing to hold.


Your medium of silk feels aligned with NMJ’s values of softness, flow, and expert craftsmanship. What does working with silk mean to you?

Silk has always felt like more than a material to me, it was my first language of safety. When I was little, my mum cut a scrap from her dressing gown and I carried it everywhere. If a day at school felt too big, she’d pin a small square inside my pocket. In a time when there was more grief and confusion than I could name, that softness became a quiet lifeline. Working on silk now feels like returning to that same tenderness, but with agency. I’m drawn to its contradictions, the alluring sheen, the way light moves across it, the transparency that reveals rather than hides, the fragility you can see but not easily break, and then the surprise of its actual strength, especially at the scale I work. There’s something powerful about a material that reads delicate but withstands so much. Painting on silk feels like honouring what once held me, and in a way it’s me speaking back to my younger self, to say we made it.


How do colour and material guide emotion in your work? What did the gemstones of our new collection challenge or inspire in you?

Colour and material are everything in my work, they’re the emotional entry point. The feel of a surface, the way a pigment sinks or resists, the temperature of a hue, those sensations guide the painting long before language does. I follow what the body reads before the mind tries to make sense of it.

The gemstones were genuinely inspiring for that reason. Their palettes didn’t compete, they spoke to each other. There was a natural flow between them, so translating them into paint felt easy and intuitive rather than forced. It was less about matching colours literally and more about catching the emotional temperature each stone held.

What does intention mean to you – both in art and in life?

For me, intention is the pause before action, the moment where you choose rather than react. In the studio and in life, it feels like a kind of poise, not slowness for the sake of being slow, but a deliberate consideration of what you’re about to put into the world. I think of it as a form of love, to consider before you move, to act with awareness instead of impulse. That pause is what gives the gesture its weight.


How do you hope people feel when they encounter your work alongside these pieces?

Adornment has always been an ancient human ritual, a way of saying “I am here” without words. Shown alongside these pieces, I hope the work invites people into that same sense of reverence and attention, to slow down, to be intentional, to really sit with the beauty already present in their life instead of moving past it. If anything, I hope the pairing nudges people toward a more conscious kind of seeing, the kind that leaves you changed, even a little, by what you spent time with.