An artist who has travelled the world for work offers you the narrative of her life and loves in a new exhibit at the Highgate Gallery.

“I’ve always been absolutely crazy about colour, I love colour," says Maggie Jennings. "My work is very celebratory, I love nature and flowers and I have a little garden absolutely stuffed full of things I’m growing. I celebrate the energy of living things and love the energy of growing things.

“This is a retrospective of my 30 years of work. Some of it is narrative, I’ve travelled quite a bit and had residencies in Greece, the Canary Islands, and I’ve been in Africa and Asia where I’ve worked with artists and toured and lectured. It’s mostly prints, monoprints and some paintings. Some of it is complete narrative, some look like photos but they’re actually paintings.”

Maggie is also revealing her obsession with the natural world, having lived in a variety of exotic places her work has a vast and colourful canvas of inspiration.

“When I was in Zimbabwe the landscape was huge and it was frightening with big, bright, colourful birds. So suddenly instead of me doing things there’s a tiny figure in the landscape and the birds are giant, they’re the content of the images.

“I just love birds, I swim at the ladies’ ponds in Hampstead throughout the winter and there’s a kingfisher regularly at the pond so there’s kingfishers on show and a redshank.

“Then some of the images are just my favourite things. There’s a section of my favourite vegetables, I’ve always felt vegetables have been very undersung. People do flowers and fruit but what about the dear old vegetable – they are very beautiful.”

Growing up in Devon may have inspired her love of nature but after completing an MA in Fine Art Screenprinting at Chelsea School of Art, Maggie settled in Highgate and works from a studio in Hackney Wick where she pushes the boundaries of tradition.

“I’ve always done printmaking, partly because I am a very practical person, I don’t mind getting my hands dirty and I like the structure that printmaking gives you. If I paint I’m an impulsive, spontaneous person and I often don’t know when to stop so I find myself ruining my paintings because I just go on and on and on. The printmaking gave me a structure and discipline which I find very useful.

“Most of the work on show is monoprinting, I like to have the rules and I like to break them. So what I’ve done is take the basic rules and push them beyond the limits so they’re not really prints anymore, they’re using print techniques to do paintings and images that are not repeated. My prints are mostly one-offs. Even the editions change, the colours change or the way I put the paper on, I wanted boundaries but I wanted to break them.”

Maggie teaches, outside of the boundaries of course, at The Royal Drawing School and Heatherleys School of Art. Her recent book, Fine Art Screenprinting, describes her unique and unconventional approach.

Highgate Gallery, Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, 11 South Grove, Highgate, N6 6BS, Friday, July 8 until Thursday, July 21. Details: 020 8340 3343