KARST residency 2013

Putting this here as there is really no other home for it. I found these images from my 2013/2014 graduate residency at KARST Gallery in Plymouth. This work also went on to be exhibited as part of 'Ambivalence' at Bank Space Gallery in Whitechapel in summer 2014. The piece was titled 'I think I can explain myself' and was glasswork and moving image. I still think it was a fine piece of work, though had I not been 23 and full of rage, I probably would have executed it with more care.

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 The only thing that has survived it this blog, the contents of which have been archived for several years, and which I'm currently going through the tedious process of reinstating.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.

Alleys 1

 

July 16th

 A new sketchbook - July 2024

Aspiration kills contentment. 

A proud and well loved jackdaw

Something to do with obeisance, just me and a snail, bending over backwards under a changing sun and moon.

Found some zines from the first time my mum had cancer and I was pretty upset. 

Also boxes and boxes of paper, scraps of drawings and words and photos, what shall I do with it all? 

I guess you have to be more careful as you get older because it is all so much more consequential - time is running out to repair your damage.

Hello

Looking back through my old sketchbook, untouched since 2021, I had a lot of ideas which are beginning to wake up again.

What is different now, is I no longer have social media. No one to show off to, but also no one to share with. What will this result in? Making art like no one is looking. 

This I have only recently realised about myself

 I grew up in Oxford and resented it for rejecting me in various ways, and this has made me resent beauty and impressiveness, or at least take them for granted.

I have forgotten how to enjoy things. Instead I make everything into a job that needs to be done. I'm not even sure what I like or don't like anymore.

My favourite weather is rain.

I have been painting

 I have been painting, and for the first time since I was a teenager I am making art without any intention of showing or selling it. I am trying to make art that is a part of my life, not outside of it. And I am going to finish things and have objects that tell a story and mean something and are exactly what I had intended them to be. It is quite different to be making without the pressure to be impressive, or clever, or even 'good'. I hope I am coming into a time of my life where I can be an artist, and a mother, a gardener, a woman, a wife, without feeling shameful, or like an imposter. I think these are hard times for everyone, and it is a hard time to be a woman. I am 31 and my womanliness has always felt like something less than I should be, something that should be concealed or overcome. What will I do with that? 

 I've lived a whole life between them and now, it feels like.

Made work, shown work, sold work, made a totally different kind of work and sold that too, grown vegetables, had babies become children, tried and tried and tried, loved, moved house, started again (or tried to), cried a great deal, made more work but didn't know what to do with it, got my bike fixed, wondered and worried. I have aged and it scares me. I never liked or knew myself and now I am not young anymore. 

 Hello?

Can you hear me?

I've been talking to you. 

We are all fluid, we are all psychic

Revisiting

I have a lot of work that I don't remember making, that has lost its context, but which is resonating once again.

Micro landscape

06/06/17

Not absent, just busy. A few things from the last week.

Departure

31/05/17

If I have faith then it is in the inter-connectedness of everything