BEFORE I started school people said to me: "Oh, you'll love it" and I imagined it would be a wonderful place and looked forward with a great deal of excitement to my first day. However, I was quickly disappointed.

I found the Holy Faith Convent in Haddiagton Road, Dublin, a gloomy place full of little girls who all seemed to know what to do, while I simply couldn't understand what they were talking about.

I hated school and cried every day of my life. I only attended because my mother (the writer Maura Laverty) used to threaten that if I didn't go, she would have to take me there in her dressing gown.

She was at her wits end trying to make me happy and moved me from school to school. I attended St Louis' in Rathmines and then a school run by a Dr Teller. That was an extraordinary experience. No-one ever told me where to hang my coat and for almost two years I sat in my raincoat in class. I was too shy to take it off.

As a young teenager I was sent to board in Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, which was a little better. Initially though, I hated it and just wanted to be back at home with my mother.

At day school I used to switch off - my real life took place outside school. At boarding school I was forced to keep tuned in and school became more real for me.

WHEN I was 15 my parents decided to send me to art school - for want of something better to do. I wasn't particularly good and left after two years. However, I loved my time there and met Pauline Bewick - who became a lifelong friend - and my future husband Philip, who was a science student at Trinity. He gave up college to become a painter.

It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I started to paint - after subconsciously absorbing his technique. We're very lucky - we paint every day and make a modest living from our work.