Tabitha is an acclaimed British artist with a series of highly successful exhibitions that have showcased her distinctive talent. Since leaving Brighton with a first class honours degree in 1977 she has lived and worked in London, building a career that has balanced part-time lecturing in art schools with a busy professional life as a painter.

Through travelling widely Tabitha has gained a flair for capturing the spirit of places as diverse as Moscow in midwinter and the hothouse of Seville. At times this has involved her in full-scale reportage - such as drawing men at work on major new buildings in London. Elsewhere she soaks up atmosphere in a more sensuous, personal way - as in her repeated visits to the wilder streets of Naples.

Tabitha prefers to tackle large-scale projects, perhaps spanning several years and overlapping with others - contrasts which spark fresh insights when a subject is returned to fully. Foreign travel is a vital stimulus - though she has often used locations in Britain to great effect.

Her first 'foreign affair' began with the first signs of thaw in the Cold War. Tabitha arrived in Moscow in the first year of Mikhail Gorbachev's rule, pre-perestroika, via a twinning scheme operated by the London Borough of Lambeth. Her intention was to sample everyday life in Russia, then largely unknown to Westerners, and this led her to hairdressers and hat-makers, markets and Metro stations. The Muscovites' wholehearted welcome inspired the rich humanity evident in Tabitha's travelling exhibition 'Moskvoretsky' - one of the first fruits of glasnost, and taken up with enthusiasm by the media in Britain and the USSR.

Back in the heart of the capitalist world - on commission from Bovis - Tabitha sketched the workforce putting up Richard Rogers' controversial Lloyd's Building. The "choreography" of steeplejacks or plasterers working against the clock fascinated her as much as the evolution of a remarkable building.

From high-tech construction Tabitha turned to the ramshackle decay - and unashamed theatricality - of Naples, a forgotten treasure which tourists nervously avoid. The city's grand palazzi are reduced to crowded tenements whose life spills out onto balconies and narrow streets, providing endless - if chaotic - visual delights.

A major exhibition for the Building Centre, celebrating Thirties Buildings, became an artistic rediscovery of many unsung masterpieces of modernism in Britain. Tabitha's vibrant oil pastels, where dashing gestures blend with rich deep tones, brought a rare dynamic to purely architectural images.

The success of the Thirties shows led to Tabitha being granted a unique privilege for an artist: access to the Channel Tunnel during all phases of its excavation. Aided by Eurotunnel staff she made regular visits to both French and British ends, sketching where it was safe, then went on to create larger images that captured the heroic drama of a great engineering project.

Recently the eternal English fascination with the French has taken Tabitha to the exclusive preserve of Deauville, where elegant Parisians parade along the boardwalk and show off at the Races. Her Deauville watercolours and gouaches became the focus of a sell-out show in London, vying for attention with her hot-blooded vision of the Seville Feria.

Tabitha is currently working on drawings and paintings from Venice, and in Hong Kong on a series of paintings of the construction of the Tsing Ma Bridge commissioned by Trafalgar House - Cleveland Structural Engineering.

Tabitha Salmon shows her private and commissioned one-person exhibitions at major London venues, such Leighton House. They are always enthusiastically attended and well reported by Press, radio and TV. Many invested in Tabitha's work, including public institutions and international companies.