I am naturally filled with curiosity. I like to mix things up, creatively. My practice is interdisciplinary and exploratory. I am always stimulated by finding new ways to express myself creatively.
I like to learn. I am always happiest when trying something new, following my interests and meandering down roads not yet taken.
Read on for a few of my current interests and explorations.
This year I am spending a lot of my time developing my new passion for printmaking. I have been studying collagraph printmaking - a process which involves creating printing plates, inking and wiping them and then printing them by hand using a printing press. This is an incredibly exciting and creative process, which gives me exactly the scope for experimentation that I most enjoy when creating work.
There is something incredibly satisfying about making, testing and refining printing plates and a certain sense of jeopardy when pulling initial prints! I love working in a space where there is...
I am collaborating with artist Sue King from Ohio in the US. We share a love of walking in nature and are making two concertina sketchbooks together to share our inspiration and create joint mini works of art. We each started a book and posted it to the other to add to. These books will go back and forth many times! Well travelled artist books! And in the making, we are entering into a correspondence, finding out more about each other. This is a real joy! You can follow our progress on our Instagram accounts.
I am collaborating with textile artist and painter Sarah Pooley. We share a love of the coast and are jointly creating works in paint and stitch. This is Slow Art. We send work by post for the other to respond to. Over months, our co-created images reveal themselves. We learn from each other and make work that has its own character, whilst still true to our own voices. A joyful creative partnership. Our first collection can be found here. We are now working on a new collection of smaller works called Postcards from Cornwall. Watch this space.
Cameraless photography / lumen printing. Making photograms with sunlight and salt water. I place my beachcombing treasures on photographic paper and let them sit in the sun. After exposure the images bathe in seawater in the dark until they are fixed. It is a kind of alchemy. Magical. A mixture of art and science, process and serendipity. Beautiful, ethereal images capture a moment in time. I am entranced!
And with the addition of cyanotype chemistry, the magical blues and greens of rockpools appear before my eyes.
Natural monotypes. I am working with cuttlefish ink on the beach. It is fitting that I use a natural ink that came from the sea. I wade and crouch and kneel, armed only with ink and paper...finding ways to capture the marks made by moving water, the shapes of seaweed, the textures of sand and rock. Seafoam, beach treasure and saltwater on paper, inky marks that smell of the sea.
