This is where all the introspective, heavy stuff gets dumped so if you’re looking for a light-hearted salve, this is not the place for you. Some of the work may be triggering with references to suicide, death and loss. All human life is here. There is humour though, as often it is the only apt response to the ridiculousness and relentlessness of life. The very process of self-expression, in all its forms, is certainly a cathartic one and a natural place for unburdening the mental detritus that we carry with us, day in, day out.
If we’re lucky, we can view loss through a lens: we find ourselves the observer not the protagonist, with the luxury of distance to be thankful for. If we’re unlucky, we can get stuck in it. Like wading through mud. One can have too much introspection. It gets boring. Rather perversely, I don’t really feel the need for anyone to see the work. I don’t even need anybody to like it. I just need to do it. The compulsion propels me forward, clearing head space for new experiences, for new life. For me, the emotion is in the very process of creating and ultimately is where the true meaning is to be found. The materials used are those which have meaning for me and are as much a statement at times, as the piece itself.
For me, loss has an abstract, intangible quality to it. Forever omnipresent. Marking you as other. The discord of brokenness. The breaths we take without it are a joy and a luxury. To love is to grieve yet to love is to be ever grateful.
She Played Us All, 2021. Detail. Oil, acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm
The original piece was made in 2021 but this photo was taken a couple of years later. Living in a small house, with a shortage of storage, I had stored this piece rather casually and haphazardly, on top of a storage cupboard in our hallway. I should have known better. Unbeknownst to me, my son, in his customary fashion, had decided to ‘tidy’ his bedroom and consequently dumped all his heavy school books and other unwanted objects on top of some of my artworks. This was the result. All but one of the needles had been squashed flat. I promise you, this was exactly how I found it. Well. I was initially distraught as this had been a difficult piece to create, I had disappeared into an emotional black hole to produce it. Yet. Yet. As I stared at it, I realised that my son had unwittingly TRANSFORMED the piece. What? One needle left standing? He had created the perfect metaphor for my life up until then. I’m so grateful to him for unknowingly giving me an important life lesson. The phoenix rising from the ashes. STILL HERE. What a gift. Accidents make the best art.
Where Shit Becomes A Thing Of Beauty. (But Don’t Shit On Your Doorstep.). 2021.
Taken abstractly, I find this image is beautiful and painterly.. I’ve had this printed onto fabric and made into a traditional vintage-style kimono. I love the perversity of such an image on something so beautiful.
Emotional Vandalism. 2021. Self portrait in mirror,, wooden carved figure (by Robin Linklater) on canvas, 20x20cm.
The Suffocating Presence Of Absence. / Danseuse Espagnole II. Homage To Miró.
Photograph, pencil on art board 30x42cm. 2021
Somewhere Only We Know. 2021. Detail. (Waxed thread, 1990s T-shirt on canvas, 100x100cm)
Somewhere Only We Know. 2021. Detail. (Waxed thread, 1990s T-shirt on canvas, 100x100cm)
Somewhere Only We Know. 2021. Detail. (Waxed thread, 1990s T-shirt on canvas, 100x100cm)
Whilst I Still Remember: My Truths And The Varying Degrees Of Decomposition. 2021. Detail. (Pen, rose petals on canvas, 100x100cm)
Work in progress. Made with the petals of the rose bush my sweet late father planted. The piece will be finished when the last rose of the season blooms.
Whilst I Still Remember: My Truths And The Varying Degrees Of Decomposition. 2021. Detail. (Pen, rose petals on canvas, 100x100cm)
Work in progress. Made with the petals of the rose bush my sweet late father planted. The piece will be finished when the last rose of the season blooms.
This Is How Menopause Feels. 2021
Curating Suicide. 2020/21. Collage, waxed thread on canvas, 60x55 cm.
Beauty In The Ephemeral. 2021. Detail. (Oil, watercolour on canvas, 50x50cm)
The original painting will be destroyed. These details, frozen in time, will be all that remain.
Timeline 1994-2017: Front. 2021. Photograph, waxed thread on canvas, 40x30cm
Timeline 1994-2017: Reverse. 2021. Waxed thread on canvas, 40x30cm
Timeline 1994-2017: Reverse. Detail 1. 2021. Waxed thread on canvas, 40x30cm
Timeline 1994-2017: Reverse. Detail 2. 2021. Waxed thread on canvas, 40x30cm
Beauty In The Ephemeral. 2021. Detail. (Oil, watercolour on canvas, 50x50cm)
The original painting will be destroyed. These details, frozen in time, will be all that remain.
Untitled, 2022. Wilting flowers still life.
Some Days I Wished That I Was Enough And Some Days I Wished That You Were Enough. 2020
Fury. 2021. Collage, Polaroid, acrylic on canvas, 40x40cm
1145 Nights And Counting. Self-Portrait 2021
Volver A Empezar. 2020
I Still Have Free Will. I Am Still Me. 2019
I Am A Bird Now. 2020
These Were Your Things. 2021
I No Longer Have To Fear You, I Just Have To Learn How To Live With You. 2020
You Planted This. It Blooms For You. 2021
I Couldn’t Have Created A Greater Metaphor For Life If I Had Tried. 2021
The Indignity Of It All. Objects Hold Stories. 2022
Can’t Get Out Of Bed. 2021
She Played Us All, 2021. Detail. Oil, acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm.
She Played Us All, 2021. Detail. Oil, acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm.
She Played Us All, 2021. Detail. Oil, acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm
She Played Us All, 2021. Oil, acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm
She Played Us All, 2021. Reverse (image flipped). Acupuncture needles on canvas, 30x40cm
It Would Be Disingenuous To Say There Aren’t Good Days. 2020
How We Felt. 2021
It Wears Her Out. Self portrait, 2020
Beauty In The Fragmented. 2021
Shrines, Shrines Everywhere. 2021
The Chair Is Me, 2022
If You Ask Questions, I’ll Bolt And Won’t Come Back. Self portrait 2019. Acrylic paint on paper, 2021.
On A Bus, Alone, With Nothing But Bling For Company. It Is Not Enough. I Am Not Enough. Self-portrait, 2021
Why Do I See Pain In Pretty Things? 2020
Oh Brother, I’ll Take You To Fairy Bridge. 2015
Is It Wrong To Sometimes Want To Leave Too? 2020
It’s The Ordinary Evenings Watching Zombies That I Miss The Most. 2015
I Walked And I Looked And I Wrote A Thing. I Don’t Know What That Thing Is. 2021
Lockdown 16/01/21
The endless loop
Sorrow
punctured
by moments
Nature
once again
rendering us thoughtful
Resist!
Rise up!
Enveloped by mist
Gratitude
Hiding in plain sight
A foot pressed against
the delicate throat of life
Its pulse defiant
The weight of loss
Of grief
Of life
Grass
Encased in ice
Trapped
or preserved?
Protected from the ravages of... what?
Us?
Ice clinging on
determinedly
A metaphor for
the
whole
fucking
world
The elusiveness of creativity
All of the time
Yet
None of the urge
Stifled
By no one but myself
The sheer weight
Pushing me
further down into the earth
All the colour
sucked out of the landscape
Yet losing none of its majesty
Its power
growing bolder
Shocking us with a scream of colour
Soothing us with its sheer chutzpah
Chutzpah??
Bringing the gift of perspective
Birds
bringing us flight
Escape
Man made structures
echoing the sentinel trees
Beauty
is wherever you choose
to see it
This is who we are
The balm of ideas
of beauty
of brokenness
of stillness
of connection
of solitary madness
of peace
It occurs to me
THIS.
This is where the release is
In expression.
This
is how to survive.