Mt Connolly Mt (Mary Theresa) Connolly is originally from N. Ireland although she lived in California for 20 years. During this time, she earned an MA degree in Economics and spent 10 years working for a major National Health provider as a health economics researcher. In the evenings she studied Flamenco dance and became a flamenco dancer with a small Flamenco troupe. Another passion and touchstone which she maintained contact with during these years was art, taking photography, joining various art groups, and taking art classes at local colleges where she won a college wide photography contest. On her return to the UK, Mt decided that she wanted to refocus her life in a more creative direction and enrolled in Fine and Applied Arts degree course at the University of Ulster where she was awarded R.E. Wright Perpetual Cup for Outstanding Achievement in a Higher Education Course. She studied here for four years but family commitments and the demands of dance gradually took over. She started her own dance school and dance group which performed all over N. Ireland. She managed and directed all aspects of the group even designing and making the dance costumes for herself, other group members and her students. Dancing and the group became and were a major part of her life for many years but in 2015 she sustained a serious injury in an accident and was forced once again to change her life’s direction. She started to teach English and has spent much of the last 3 years living on and off between Italy and Northern Ireland. During the rigorous lockdown of early 2020, Mt spent many months in isolation in a one-bedroom apartment in Rome and it was during this time that she once again turned to art. She found solace and companionship drawing along with other artists in zoom life drawing classes offered all over the world. Since then, she has not stopped and continues to draw or paint in some form every day. Almost all the art she is currently sharing on her Instagram account www.instagram.com/connolly.mt is from this period of her life. Having fully reignited her passion and connection with art, Mt has created a small home studio and drawing has become an integral part of her daily life which she no longer feels she could live without.