About Us

Matthew

Matthew Stoodley is a storyteller with a deep desire to inspire his listeners to really explore thier imagination.

Once upon a time there was a cornflake -- storytelling.

That is the opening line to a story I have told since I was 8. I always considered it a joke and it ends with a terrible pun, but I became used to friends asking me to tell the cornflake joke again.

And so, around camp fires, on stage, and anywhere people were gathered, this was my main party piece.

At least, until I became a magician.

As a magician, I discovered that magic is not about the sleights, it is about the audience. If the audience enjoys themselves then I have done my job.

The magic that was best received was the magic that told a story.

As a storyteller there is nothing more exciting to me than that moment when Teller and Audience both fade into the background as all are too deeply engaged in the story to think about anything else.

Natasha

Natasha Stoodley is an illustrator with skills in pencil, pen, watercolours, acrylics, and web graphics. She has designed t-shirts, posters, handouts, flyers, business cards, gift cards, booklets, and she completed 104 illustrations plus a full colour cover illustration for a translation of the Pilgrim's Progress being distributed in SE Asia. She hopes to, through Story Feet, begin illustrating storybooks and picture books more regularly.

I always loved to draw, especially with my mum. She use to colour pages in my colouring book with me, and they were my favourite pages.

Art became serious for me when I was 10 or 11. A neighbourhood friend came over and proudly informed me that he could definitely draw Sonic the Hedgehog better than I could. At 10 years old, them's fighting words.

My Papa saw potential for my art to translate onto the (then up and coming) Internet. He got me a copy of Paint Shop Pro, and suddenly I had access to the digital world.

My parents, friends, and others have inspired an excitement in me to explore the many facets of art. I hope I keep the excitement alive through my work and inspire others while I'm at it.

The Stoodleys

We were living in East Asia when we met at a conference in Thailand. It was horribly inconvenient from the beginning. Natasha being Canadian, and working in Laos, and Matthew being English studying in China.

We both knew the relationship was too impractical to work, and so we made it. After many a Skype call, we were married just over a year later (September 2009) in Canada, and lived there for a year before coming to England where we have been since.

Our first was born a year later while we were studying at Redcliffe College in Gloucester, and our fourth in May 2017

I love watching the children learn, they test everything in such a wonderfully natural way. They imagine freely, and recently discovered a never ending well of sandwiches on a climbing frame at the local park. They made sure I had a lots, so we all went home quite full.