Melanie Cairns started her professional career as a fashion designer and couturier, then moved to a film studio to get some secretarial experience. While working exclusively for their sole lawyer in London, she took a non-traditional part-time route to legal qualification. Finally qualifying as a solicitor ten years later, she now practises law in-house in the media and entertainment industry.

Mel lives in Buckinghamshire with her husband and two Norwegian Forest cats. During the 2020 pandemic lockdown, Axel (one of their Norwegian Forest cats) escaped from their garden and was killed on the road by their house, leaving them with Saffy and Argyle. On top of the challenges of an excessively busy time selling hugely popular TV programmes to broadcasters and platforms for a US studio’s London-based business, Axel’s death really impacted Mel’s well-being. Her personal mechanism to balance the stress of work is to create.

She dusted down her sewing machine and shut down her laptop for two hours at lunchtime each day to decompress by sewing scrubs for a charity set up by a couture designer in London. That reignited her creative curiosity, so she decided to take some time out from her professional career to rest and recuperate from March to May 2021. To make sure she felt a sense of achievement, she took an old sketch pad and her trusted Caran d’Ache ink pen and doodled her cats every day and added motivational quotes. This turned out to be the perfect therapy, and after posting each day on Instagram, Mel has a loyal and growing number of followers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok under the handle @i.am.melc.

In December 2022, Mel published a collection of her illustrations in a beautiful hard back book, ‘Cats & Quotes & Other Furry Friends’, which is the purrfect gifting book for any cat and dog lover. She continues to draw inky ‘fast & loose’ pawtraits every day and has started local workshops in High Wycombe themed ‘Draw a Cat with Mel’. Mel has most recently exhibited at Obsidian Art in Stoke Mandeville for Bucks Art Weeks 2024.

Melanie’s work will be displayed at the Sally Evans Artist & Makers Fair – Thame Town Hall, Fri 18-Sat 19 October.