My current practice has been gradually emerging out of the recognition of being in an in-between place for many years.
Personal and intimate experiences are the backbone of what I have been making. I am exploring loss, death and the process of bereavement as Rites of passage and thresholds. My work has followed a natural, intuitive and organic line of enquiry.
I make frameworks using willow, with paint and ink-printed, layered paper pieces that have all the tropes of painting. I use tissue paper because of its resilience, and at the same time looks fragile. These physical layers are imbued with metaphor and echo stuckness and shedding associated with the grief and bereavement process, as well as transitional spaces that are full of ambiguity.
What has emerged is not about an end result, it is about a process. It's not always about making still images.
I’m exploring spacial elements and physical frameworks with sculptural form that invite interaction. I make vessels, arks of holding and release-like cocoons, rich with metaphor and symbolism.
My personal stories reflect the wider intuitive, earth-based, spiritual process which informs my understanding of the world. My practice also comes out of a long-standing questioning of the human’s relationship to life and our environment. I am of the opinion that we are not just part of Nature, we are Nature.
The focus of my practice is both allowing and surrendering to these natural cycles and observing and expressing the tensions and resistance inherent at the places of liminality.
Interview
Biography
Born Worcestershire. Living and working in Kent, UK.
Education
BA (hons) in Fine Art (painting), St Martin’s School of Art, London, 1983–1986.
MA in Fine Art, UCA, Canterbury, Kent, 2018-2020
Group Exhibitions
2020 May - Virtual Print Fair - Future Foundry - Dover Print festival.
May - ‘Reunion’- UCA Kent Galleries - online open exhibition.
March - MA student group, Creek Creative, Faversham, Kent.
March - MA student group, Brewery Tap, Folkestone, Kent.
2019 December - ‘I make art about’ - Joseph Wales Studio, Margate, Kent.
2018 March - International Women’s Festival, Creek Creative, Faversham.
2017 November - Midwinter Group Artist studio Show, Canterbury.
October - Autumn Group Artist studio show, Canterbury.
2016 August - ‘Skin - Pandoras Other Box’– The Horsebridge Arts Centre, Whitstable.
2015 November - ‘Memory’ - Kent Creative Group - Pie Factory, Margate.
April - ‘Animal Magic’ - The Beaney Art Museum and Library, Canterbury.
January - ‘Soil’ - Kent Creative Live, Horsebridge Arts Centre, Whitstable.
2014 October-November - Canterbury Festival, Artist’s Open House.
Ongoing Projects
2020 ‘Collaboration with Farmland and the Natural World’, residency, Adisham Farm, Kent.
2019 ‘Art of the Woods’, creative workshops, collaborating with the natural world in local woods.
Further Training, (relevant to my practice)
1999-2000 Practitioners Training course, Eagles Wing Centre of Contemporary Shamanism
1997–1998 Further Psycho-spiritual counselling training with the Foundation of Shamanic studies (Sandra Ingerman)
1994–1995 Counselling Training with Eagles Wing Centre of Contemporary Shamanism