Rima Staines is an artist using paint, wood, word, music, animation, clock-making, puppetry and story to attempt to build a gate through the hedge between the worlds.

Rima’s inspirations include the world and language of folktale; peasant and nomadic living; the art and music of Old Europe; magics of every feather; wilderness, plant-lore; the margins of thought, community and spirituality; and the beauty there is to be found in otherness.

Rima's artwork has appeared in and on books, magazines, and record covers on both sides of the Atlantic. She maintains a passionately-followed blog at http://intothehermitage.blogspot.com and has sold paintings and prints of her work (as well as the clocks she makes) on her travels the length and breadth of Britain. A former accordionista with the London Gypsy Orchestra, she can now be found playing by Devon’s street corners and campfires. She has books in the making, and also produces animations and puppets and obscure games in lost dialects.

Rima lives on the wild edge of Dartmoor, working from a studio at the top of a ladder beyond a trapdoor, where she keeps her wonder-cauldron simmering.