To musicians as much as gallery-owners, Fiona Hawthorne is a more-than-familiar face. Usually, this artist-designer is drawing as they play -- whatever the size of the venue or the listening audience. Sketches of Big Nights Out, of rehearsals and one-off concerts have become popular facets of Hawthorne's regular shows. And she tries to secure exhibition space which operates in a populist mode: cafes, theatre galleries, jazz events.

Married to actor and musician Colin Salmon, Hawthorne is known as the artist who successfully caught the emergence of Britain's young jazz scene.

In 1989, when Jazz-FM was launched. much of the station's advertising was done in a knockoff Hawthorne style. But her love of jazz as the ultimate live moment dates from her unusual background.

Born in Northern Ireland, Hawthorne spent her teenage years in Hong Kong and, before art college in London, she attended Atlantic College in Wales. "From an early age," she says, "I went to school in a very mixed culture: with people of all races, all colours, all kinds of language skills. I wasn't part of any majority."

"Because of that, I think I feel very comfortable in mixed atmospheres."

Music played a large part in her stimulating childhood and so did the habit, from early on, of drawing from life.

"I've drawn as long as I can remember. When we traveled, my mum kept my sketchbook in her bag. Then when we were bored or when there were delays, my sister and brother and I would draw."

" We drew on the tablecloths of restaurants, on airport floors, on walls." For Hawthorne, her drawing became "a pure pleasure".

"I loved it like other kids get into reading or playing with toys". Now, she says, she misses any period of not drawing.

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