Biography
I was born in 1976 in a small city in southern Spain called La Linea, in the border with Gibraltar. The middle child of 5 sisters (Maria, Luz, myself, Nieves and Gema) with an older brother (Francisco) preceding us, my family household was always busy and bursting at the seams with people, and my mother amazingly loved this, the more the merrier! This continues to be so when we are all together and some friends called us an Almodóvar family, because of how wonderfully chaotic it can be when we all get together.
I had a great childhood with fantastic parents (Maria Isabel and Pepe Luis) that took us on wonderful trips in the summer in the homemade campervan around Spain and Portugal. Summer days were spent at the beach and winter weekends on the countryside making barbecues and large paellas in the open. Yes, it was pretty idyllic!
A good student at school, I was always keen in art, history and also did some ‘acting roles’ in the school theatre group. So I was always interested in the arts and also did a little painting and drawing in my spare time. I met a Scotsman in Gibraltar (Stephen) in my last year at highschool almost 10 years my senior, and had a little summer romance. However, this proved to be more than a summer romance, and we continued to see each other in the distance when I went to study History of Art at Uni in Malaga. After 2 years of distance dating, I decided to come to Glasgow to be closest to him and have a little adventure. I ended up moving in with Stephen and going to Glasgow University to do a degree in joint Honours History of Art and Archaeology. It was very tough to undertake in a different language but I really enjoyed the course and managed to graduate with a first class degree, I am not sure how. After graduating I worked for Glasgow Museums in a project for the restoration of a series of tearoom by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which was fascinating. I had already thought for a while that I wanted to pursue a career in restoration/conservation of artistic heritage and this work helped confirm this. This was followed by working for a little analytical business for archaeological artefacts and then for a stone conservation company in Edinburgh, which involved a lot of outdoors work cleaning and restoring the facade of buildings and sculptures. Whilst doing this I also completed a MSc in Architectural Conservation at Edinburgh College of Arts (also I don’t know how!). After having kids (I have 2 wonderful boys, Lewis 21 and Raul 16 who also do some modelling and commercial acting by the way) I decided to guide my conservation/restoration work to an indoors setting closer to home and went back to college to do an HND on Furniture Restoration at City of Glasgow College. I did this alongside one of my sisters, Luz, who had also moved to Scotland with me back in 1996 (did I mention that she is married to the brother of my Scottish husband? I know, weird right?). She wanted a change of career and we thought we could do this together. We now have a little furniture restoration and upholstery business together called Light & Dew (after the translation of our names into English) where we have been working together for over a decade. We have so much fun (and the occasional fight too!). Realising I was not happy in my marriage, I separated 2 years ago and moved out of the family home to my little flat in Battlefield in the Southside of Glasgow. I am very happy on my own (well, my grown up kids and the dog come to stay with me often) and working away with my sister in our little workshop fixing furniture for clients. However, I also like to get out of my comfort zone and have started doing a little work as an extra in the past few months. Being self-employed and my own boss, this is easy to fit in with my restoration work, giving me a little extra cash and the possibility of getting out of my very small circle of family and friends and having a little fun doing something different, and it turns out I am not too bad at it!
Skills
Furniture Restoration, Upholstery, Machine Sewing, a little acting, can dance (cannot sing), into fitness, speak English and Spanish (and a little Italian), very friendly, natural looks