Hayley Gillespie was born in 1972, in Kent, England. At the age of four, she clearly remembers drawing all over her sister"s bedroom walls, and thinking "this is the life for me!"

Her mother would find her asleep in bed with colour pencils stuck in her legs, and felt tip pen stains on the sheets! Some of her fondest childhood memories are playing in the summertime with the neighbors kids, bike riding, performing circus' in the garden and pretending to be in the famous five!

When Hayley left school, she went on to study interior design for a couple of years, before opening a little shop, making and selling hand painted children's furniture. After a while she opened market
stalls at Greenwich and Camden Markets in London, and was working for various London councils with a theatre company, making props and painting scenery, as well as working in schools and Royal parks doing
arts projects with children.

In 1996, Hayley relocated to sunny Queensland, Australia, and began painting large murals in hotels and shops for tourism, as well as designing brochures and t shirts. After having a child of her own, and not able to find artwork that really captured the childhood she remembered and now that of her son's, she began painting his life on canvas clustered with memories of her own, to conjure the feeling of what it is to be a child, and how short and special that time can be.

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