Rikey Austin's great love is in painting bears and making up bear stories. This great passion started from humble beginnings with sketches for her friends and stories for her children.
When they were young, Rikey's three sons listened to her stories about teddy bears and their adventures. Many of these stories suddenly found a home, a beginning, in the creation of Alice, a little girl who helped her mum in a teddy bear repair shop. Alice finds many bears in various situations and her life revolves around their adventures and the inevitable repairs that follow. Along with these delightful stories, Rikey painted the bears whose lives had become entwined in Alice's shop.
Rikey's characters include Cobby, who fell overboard during a boat trip around the bay, Mary-Jane, who was so busy with shells, buckets and flags that she didn't notice the tide coming in, and Tat, who's been so loved that he left a trail of stuffing wherever he went.
This autumn, the first of her stories have been published under the banner of 'Tales from Alice's Bear Shop', with illustrations painted by Rikey herself. And here, her characters have come to life as part of RUSS' Alice's Bear Shop Collection.
Rikey Austin lives with her family in Lyme Regis, England, a coastal town that served as the backdrop for The French Lieutenant's Woman and gives her bear tales a hint of salt and sea.
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