Can you tell us about the process?

Generally what I'll do is I draw the subject - that's usually just an outline. Then I'll either photograph it or scan it. I tend to use photoshop or a design programme to fill it because I like exactness. I'm much happier when things are exact and I like to print things. I might colour by hand, and if people want an original they can have it, but it will always become a digital file.

What type of projects excite you most?

Yoshimi from the Wa Cafe came to me and said she wanted her menus illustrated and a mural on the wall. I loved the discussion around the project - the going back and forward and developing. I'm still struggling with the idea of how to do this mural, but I'll know when it's right and if she feels like it's right, then that's a brilliant moment; everything comes together. I did a very small project for Nadur recently. It was just a small map which Ciara had asked me on the Friday night around 8pm when I was halfway through a bottle of prosecco. She said she needed it for Saturday lunchtime so we went back and forward on messenger, finished the map, and it was just such a lovely way to work. I send her what I had, she came back and said, maybe move that over. It was really quick, she's happy, I'm happy. The collaboration, boom, done.

So you enjoy the collaborative side of things...

I love that side of things and I hate it. I love it when it goes well. But it can break your heart when you've agreed to do a project and you're not seeing the same vision at the end of the day. I don't want to and I generally can't do something that's not my style. I can adapt a drawing, but I don't want to do that for a living. I want it to be an honest drawing to me, so I always say to people; ‘This is my style - is this what you want?' If it is, brilliant, forge ahead but you have to have that understanding.

You also produce your own natural products, and create the packaging yourself. Tell us about Wee Balms?

It's now called Project Gala - In the future I want to promote wildflower seeds, bees and butterflies as much as as the balms and I'd like to start supplying people with their own balm making products. I think people should be making things for themselves, out of nettles from their garden, or whatever they have in the cupboard. It's ten times better than anything they get in the chemist, so Project Gala is developing in that direction. To the range, I've introduced a Connemara Witches Wax, which is a multipurpose balm for skin, lips, male, female, in the middle, so I'm going through a process with that; I want to focus on one really amazing product. My friend, Po, has a community project in Burkina Faso, so I'm getting shea butter from him. It will also include irish oils, hopefully irish bees wax and then a vegan mexican wax.

Social media is a big part of what you do too...

I'm managing some small businesses' social media, but I still see that as illustration because you're still telling a story. If I'm not posting an illustration that I've done that's focused on the business, I'm using photography to engage some kind of response or a conversation so that in itself is illustration. You're illustrating an engaging concept or idea.

I think social media is fascinating. I know the downside, but I think there's more positives for me. It's a tremendous network for creative people, it's a great forum for it, it's fabulous for ideas. I have a huge interest in animal welfare and you hope that somewhere along the line you might post something that might be of interest to somebody or that might influence them. In the whole I think it's positive and it's free advertising and sharing it back and forward it is perfect I don't know how we ever lived without it. For me, it just opens up a whole world. )

What's the drive behind all this?

It's not money anyway. I just want to do it. I get up in the morning and if I have an idea, I draw it and that's what makes me happy. If I don't draw for a week, I actually get quite down. It's a release. It keeps me happy. I get excited about new projects. There's an impatience to do it, to fulfill it.

I spent so much of my 20s working really hard in restaurants and partying that I didn't get anything creative done. I really felt that was missing and that's why I kept going back to college - to try and get that focus back. There's been a lot more discipline in my life in the last ten years, even if I've gone off in a funny direction. I do try to draw every day. I try to do something every day that's creative. Sometimes I wish I had a slightly more practical drive, but I don't.

I'd be quite introverted at times. I can spend a lot of time on my own but at the end of the day, I do rely on people and chats and collaborations and social encounters. You just don't know from one day to the next what might turn up. If you put yourself out there a little bit, you just don't know. I love that.

Describe yourself.

Busy, creative, animal loving, slightly neurotic, slightly over anxious, introverted, sociable, maybe slightly eccentric.

Any mentors/influencers along the way?

I've had some really good teachers along the way - at the Burren College of Art, pretty much everyone I met there at the time had an influence on me. Rather than having people who taught me things in my field, I think it's the people that have been positive about what I do that have influenced me most, so my partner, Roisin, my sister, Gianna Tomasso who's a political artist. To have someone like her respect what I do, which is in a different realm, is amazing. Everyone at Ard Bia - it's just about someone taking a minute to say that they like what you do.

What is it about living here that inspires you?

There are more possibilities in Galway - you just don't know who you're going to meet. The degrees of separation - there aren't any here really. You don't know who it is you're speaking to and there are always these kind of happy accidents, a synchronicity about the place. I've just been really lucky because I've met such amazing people here. I don't think I'd like to be anywhere else.

What would you like to see for Galway in the future?

I hope it doesn't lose its character, its looseness, the little bit of hippy that it still has. I hear a lot about design hubs and hot desks - that's great; I really think it's brilliant, but I still would like to see an equal amount going to studio spaces and creative spaces that are not money-driven. I hope that with the way that the design is progressing, that it doesn't get too generic. I just hope it can keep its character because we really are in such a capitalistic society, it's squeezing the original out of everything. There's so many great heads around, but if the city centre is too expensive and if it's Starbucks that has to move in because no one else can fill that space, then culture just gets squeezed out like a sponge. I'd hate to see that happen. But I'm optimistic that it won't.