Hello!

I am Leafy Dumas. I was christened Alethea, but I'm known as Leafy. 

I am an artist born into an army family. After a nomadic childhood attending 9 different schools (living in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and the Caribbean), I achieved a first-class honours degree in graphic design from Exeter College of Art. More recently I went back to school to The Boatbuilding Academy in Lyme Regis for a heady year of woodworking. I left with one scoop oar, a toolbox and a double distinction in a level 3 diploma in boatbuilding.

I now operate out of my Mersea Island studio, gloriously cut off by high tides and surrounded by a watery wilderness of creeks and saltmarsh on the East Anglian edge. I work predominantly as an artist (with a queue of boats outside the door longing to be tended). My work is awash with North Sea air and all things salty; a love letter to the art of sailing and the romance of the sea. Children's literature and seafaring history are also clear influences woven throughout.