[1] Her publisher describes her humour as "observational or absurd, with a keen sense of the turmoil of fear and obsession that teems beneath the respectable exterior of most of us.

[2][failed verification] Appleby recalls a childhood spent making camps, climbing trees, and hoisting flags outdoors, and reading books such as Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazons.

[1] In an interview with The Guardian, Appleby describes her mother, Ibbie, as coming ‘... from Canada, a distant land of snow and french toast, far away across the sea, where she skated and skied in the day and danced to big bands by night.’ Towards the end of the Second World War, having fallen in love with Steven’s father, Walter, she came to Britain on a convoy.

Together, after the war, they bred boxer dogs, performed with the village amateur dramatic society and laughed at The Goon Show on the wireless.’[2] Appleby attended Wooler Church of England Primary School, where she won prizes for Plasticine modelling until, aged eleven, she was sent to Bootham School, York, as a boarder, where she pursued her interests in music and art.

She played keyboards in school bands and, inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar, wrote and performed (with Nick Battey) Inwards & Outwards, a rock cantata.

[1] After school, in 1974, she took a foundation course in art & design at Manchester Polytechnic, followed by one term on the BA graphic design course (with Malcolm Garrett and Peter Saville) after which she dropped out to play with school friends in a band called Ploog, which was influenced by prog rock and complicated pop that she has described as ‘far beyond their playing capabilities.’[1] In 1977 Appleby returned to art education.

During this time, she developed Rockets Passing Overhead – the Annals of Captain Star for New Musical Express, as well as creating drawings for Punch[5] and many other magazines.

Captain Star (featuring the voices of Adrian Edmondson, Richard E. Grant, Denica Fairman, Gary Martin and Kerry Shale) aired on CITV in the UK in 1997 and was seen on various networks throughout the world, including Teletoon (Canada), YLE (Finland), Canal+ (France), ZDF (Germany) and Nickelodeon.

She has also written and drawn over 24 books, including Men – The Truth, Jim – the Nine Lives Of A Dysfunctional Cat and Steven Appleby’s Guide To Life – the Complete Guardian Loomus Cartoons, and The Captain Star Omnibus.

Her other works include the musical play Crocs In Frocks (with Teresa Early & Roger Gosling),[8] performed by theatre company New Peckham Varieties at The Magic Eye Theatre, Peckham and at the ICA, London (2006); and the radio series, Steven Appleby’s Normal Life,[9] which ran for two series and a Christmas special on BBC Radio 4 from 2001 to 2004.

Since 2007 Appleby has collaborated with Linda McCarthy (of Tiny Elephants Ltd)[10] on a series of stop motion animated films based on her eccentric country house cartoon strip Small Birds Singing.

They also collaborated, in 2011, on a looped gallery piece entitled A Small Repetition of Myself in which a puppet Steven Appleby thinks, draws, discards, then starts over – forever.

Appleby has had numerous solo exhibitions of paintings, prints and ceramics, including Islands (2011) at The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh[11] and Tell Me All Your Secrets And I Will Put Them In My Drawings (2005), Icebergs (2008) and REAL | UNREAL (2016) at ArteArtesania, Soller, Mallorca.

[15] In March 2016 Appleby was one of five artists invited to take part in a residency at The Carlton Arms Hotel, New York,[16] where she spent a month painting a mural on the walls and in the bathroom of room 9a.