Can you tell me about your TV appearance?

I took part in BBC One’s The Big Painting Challenge, a sort of Bake Off for amateur artists which was broadcast back in April. It was amazing but I don’t think I’d do it again. Always having a camera crew in front of you, being told to resolve a painting in under three hours, and being subject to constant criticism without tuition does not necessarily make for good art. That said, I am really proud of a pastel drawing of a Flamenco dance that I did from memory.

Did the constant pressure help you to develop as an artist?

TV cameras make surprisingly good mirrors and even if I didn’t learn how to put things into perspective on the canvas, I certainly learnt to how to do so in my own head. I also learnt how to stand up for myself – if you try to follow a narrative someone else has written for you, you just end up losing the plot entirely.

What were you doing on your year abroad? Were you more creative away from the constraints of Cambridge?

I’m ashamed to admit that, though I spent some time in galleries and on painting courses while studying in Paris and Verona, I spent a great deal more in pizzerias and cheese shops, losing euros and gaining quite a few pounds. I stopped myself over-indulging by going on a “still-life diet”; painting the food I bought stopped me snacking on it because otherwise I’d be left with nothing but a canvas full of crumbs!

How will being back in Cambridge affect your creativity?

Cambridge is a strange place where it’s possible to feel at your most exhausted, stressed and creative at the same time. The city and my college are undeniably beautiful but, as a portrait painter, I’m most grateful to Cambridge for its sheer quantity of quirky characters. I’ve even stopped bemused strangers on the street to ask them to sit for me. It’s also nice to be able to bring art history into my essays which I’ve done, it has to be said, with varying degrees of success. I once wrote an essay comparing 17th century French theatre to a painting of a cabbage.

How do your translation skills inform your approach to translating ideas into art?

Painting or drawing with only a photo for reference is a bit like putting great literature into Google Translate: each part might be translated accurately but the feeling and mood are lost and you lose the relationship with what is in front of you. But drawing from life seems to have the power not only to capture but to liberate. In my first French translation class, I was told that reproducing the original is impossible so you might as well make it better. The same goes for art. It sounds impossible but that doesn’t matter; it’s the aspiration itself that’s exciting.

I really like your abstract seascape painting. Why did you choose abstract art for the final BBC challenge?

I still don’t know whether it was a protest, a white flag of surrender, or whether the turpentine fumes had finally got to me. After making it to the final of the show, we were taken to Dartmouth Royal Navy College which, as a 21-year-old languages student with a striking disinterest in boats, left me completely cold. My ‘artistic response’ was a single white rectangle on a grey background which I claimed in crazed sincerity encapsulated Britain’s sea-faring heritage. But weirdly, in an hour-long show which literally involved watching paint dry, it was something that people remembered, and was the first of my BBC paintings to sell. I’m still glad I took the risk, if only to have seen the judges so completely lost for words!

What are your plans for the future?

I’m doing some talks and demonstrations throughout the year and am hoping to exhibit my work next summer, but for the moment I’m just doing the odd painting and running a life drawing society at my college, Clare. I’m also saving up to rent a studio so that I have somewhere to make a proper creative mess!