Grids

When considering a subject to explore, I often think in 'series of ', photographs, drawings, paintings etc and I frequently return to mark making in rows and rows of lines, exploring the meditative quality of repetition.  When looking for a way to translate a large resource of phone photos (where I record daily experience as some sort of compulsive visual diary) into a painterly response I thought of watercolour and its simplicity and immediacy, and these first abstract paintings/drawings you see here happened as a result. 

Originally an important part of forming these grids is the gathering of photos on my phone. Playing with images and collaging them into more detailed grids.  This is important to me in a busy life of artist, mother and work commitments, using my phone as this kind of sketch tool is another way of pushing my art practice, grabbing small moments at any possible time, reviewing and editing in any place, taking an experience and developing it further.

Humans are pattern seeking creatures and I see that I seem to naturally pick out grids and circles, simple lines and repeated patterns.  I think of it as part of a 'noticing', an embedded mindfulness and an understanding of the world around me. In mindfulness we drawn to the breath and to being in the moment.  In noticing my surroundings I recognise a sense of being and a grounding and through repetitive mark making I can make this tangible, sometimes reducing this to simple stroke after stroke. Noticing, being, making, breathing.  

In 2022 I limited the subject to particular places, St Ives, Lyme Regis, following a creative instinct. I created a painting from all the photographs of green places we had spent time in to relax and contributed this to an exhibition called 'Solace' at Musgrove Park Hospital, as part of the Somerset Reacquainted project. 

I have looked at making series of photographs capturing a place or an experience, a couple of these works in progress are shown at the bottom of the page in 'Lightning' and 'Hill'. Gathering colour, experience and collaging them together.  

I am currently developing a work called #495Moons which links Grids to my work on Moon.

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Somerset Reacquainted 'First Offering'

Grids 1,2 & 3. Notations from the Winter of 2020 /2021.
Contributed to the Somerset Reacquainted Collaborative Book

'After Cornwall' 2022. Acrylic on Canvas. 50x50cm.

'Things turn out this way some times' - Solace Exhibition 2021.
Watercolour on Canvas, 60x60cm, SOLD

'After Lyme Regis' Watercolour on Canvas, 30x30cm

Photographic works

Microscope 2021

Lightning 2022

Hill 2022

Extract from writings in 2020:

In my last post you saw a work in progress watercolour abstract and this is the digital work it is based on. A collage of photos on my phone between March and June this year.

Time has moved so strangely in the last 4 months, sometimes just one day has felt like three different lifetimes.  I look back over photographs from the last few months and see different stages of knowledge and emotions.  The influences and impacts of life from outside our refuge of home and the movement of life within it.

 

I find solace in taking photographs.  Tiny snaps of creativity when I find myself unable to draw or paint.  Along the ebb and flow of my creativity, working from home and looking after my child during lockdown has meant time painting and drawing is restricted.  I have in some ways found parallels with my maternity leave 4 years ago when creativity also found it’s way through in almost compulsive photography.   I found a fascination with my immediate surroundings and the garden and the seasons happening around us.  I photograph the garden, our walks, our creations, meals, drawings and ourselves.  Compiling and editing and playing digitally in fleeting moments.  Recording, documenting, remembering.