Rockpool study

When I was 19 or 20 my Mum bought be a digital camera that you could use underwater. It was just a small point and shoot, and is very similar to the camera I use now. This was before smartphones were popular, possibly before they existed, and long before they could do all the fancy stuff they do now, things I assume like taking underwater photos.
I had this camera and thought it was just the coolest thing in the world. I loved beaches, rockpooling, anything to do with the sea (except for swimming in it, that came later) and now I had this portal with which to uncover all sorts of secrets.
I have another little underwater camera now. It doesn't take great photos, but it gives an impression. I also use a snorkel mask to put my whole face into large pools now, and just hang out down there. There's something very singular about kneeling upsidedown on spiky rocks with your bum in the air and your face in freezing cold water, hoping to see something beautiful or disgusting.

It's up to you how you receive it. Perhaps it's just a window into something usually hidden, and now you can have a piece of it. I don't know that I'm even sure what it is to me. Something tied up in memory and mystery and grief.

Hello 2025

I get rid of everything, I delete everything. That has included basically every artwork I have ever made, and deleting every Instagram, website, tumblr, facebook I have ever used. The only thing that has survived it this blog, the contents of which have been archived for several years, and which I'm currently going through the tedious process of reinstating. I can't check or read every post so they're going up pretty indiscriminantly, so it will be rather a complete record of my time studying fine art over a decade ago more than anything, but there we are, it's all I have. It will take time as not only am I having to manually enter the dates of each entry to keep them chronological, but also I put my chair on my laptop yesterday and now have only half a screen.
In time I'll go back over some of the old entries. I'm sad to see a lot of what I consider my 'best work' isn't there, I suppose because I was busy making it, rather than recording it. But I'm surprised by the amount of work there is and how many ideas I had, and how much of it was so playful and childlike and un-self-conscious. I like to think that as I have gotten older I have become more confident, but in so many ways I haven't. I was married within a year of graduating, and had my first daughter not long after that - my energies for the last decade have gone into budgeting, cooking and housework, I'm confident at that. Making art, not so much.
But I am making an affort in my life right now to get back to making, and more than that, to find a way and reason to share what I have made. I think in the last few years this has been a bit of a stumbling block, because I've had no desire to share, I've had to incentive to make.
I also haven't looked at any art for years. I think art broke my heart a bit. When I didn't immediately find my niche following my degree - I didn't fit in with the trendy Plymouth contemporary art scene, and I certainly didn't fit in with the Devon village hall hare-painting ladies - I gave it up, swore it off, and burnt my bridges.
But there's nothing like a crisis to get you going, and these last few years seem to have been one long crisis and I'm spilling over.

Photos I insert seem to just show up here as code which is an interesting development, so I can't be sure what I am describing. (I think) here is my current 'studio', and a fern outside my window.
Stand by for some work.