Maria Harding was born in Oxford, UK and has an honors degree in Fine Art from Liverpool University (1997), UK, specialising in painting figurative work. She describes herself as a professional graphic designer for the past twenty years and an unofficial artist her whole life. In her professional career spanning over two decades, she has worked with a wide variety of companies, a few being The BBC, Hotel Chocolat, Fairfax, Weldon Owen kids' books, Cambridge University, Laureate University and some amazing musicians and artists along the way. From 2011-16, she ran a successful business painting custom stencil portraits, and was selected as a finalist for The Stencil Art Prize in 2013 and 2015. She is now specialising as a portrait artist using a more free flowing technique with water colours. She currently resides in Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia along with her musician husband Tom, son Ben and dogs Charlie and Snoopy.