Artist, teacher and mother living in Suffolk. Sharing ideas, journeys, thoughts, observations.
The sea is penny grey, an ocean of soft, glassy, rolling ripples. Gently lapping the shore in a hushed breathing rhythm . I am held, enveloped, moving with the swell. I wonder if I stayed in the water for long enough whether I would be sculpted like ancient driftwood. Offered back up on the stones, a weathered treasure. Time suspended, the constant horizon an un-moving shelf of soft tonal shift. Sea birds skim the surface in linear flight, slicing through the air. Stillness shifting.
On the shore I walk a line alongside the sea. A tide line where the fringes of the water leave behind treasures of fragments sculpted by the water. Sometimes it’s hard to see to begin with, once found I am connected to it, held in a gentle trajectory. Plucking blue-green scribbled lines from the sand, or smooth rounded driftwood pebbles. Ragged gull feathers protrude from amongst the stones alongside ancient dark weathered shoe soles. Fragile seaweed skin-like plastics, salt eroded, fluttering caught in the shingle. After storms great multiples are washed ashore, hundreds upon hundreds of brittle stars. Lifting up onto spindly legs, walking back to the water. Snaking abundant lines of cuttlefish fish bones, brilliant white against the pebbles. Whelks eggs, mermaids purses and purple jewel like muscle shells pepper the drifts of seaweed. Always shifting, changing with the seasons and the tides.
Go at the end of the day. Not at the end of the light, but when everyone else journey’s home. Go and plant your feet in the sand, stand against the breeze with the grey gulls. Breath in the ocean, on your own, in gentle solitude. Step out of time, hold ancient weathered pottery in the palm of your hand. Harvest fragments of wood carved by the sea, fill your pockets with lost feathers. Follow scattered trails of birds footprints, forage in tumbling scribbles of seaweed.
Go at the start of the day, when everyone else is still sleeping. Fill your eyes with soft dawn light, or the blazing awakenings of the sun. Bathe in bird song, come eye to eye with raptors. Breath in the rising smell of the earth, of blossoming hedgerows. Be silent and distantly present, hold your breath to catch a glimpse of resting deer. Holding their gaze just for a moment. Glimpse sun catcher dewy golden threads of spider’s webs, while a ghost of the moon floats in the sky. Sail through soft shadows split by fresh light. Carry the wind, the mist, spring rain on your skin into the day.
I don’t belong anywhere, and while that’s problematic for others, I am comfortable with it. As a child I would sit in the middle of the stairs, an exposed hiding place. Nobody stopped there, unless they consciously chose to join me.
I enjoy the spaces in between. Situations of flux, transience and shift. In the morning I ride out through the dawn, as the darkness lifts and the shadows of the landscape emerge. Night and day seeping into each other, creating intangible forms. The underbellies of owls flash silent white in my headlamps. Tiny glowing moths emerge and float towards me. Black fluttering shapes flit between shadowy fragmented hedgerows, skimming across my path.
Noises are soft and unfamiliar, or sometimes sharp in the silence of the half light. The land merges into the trees and sky, smudged layers of half tones and soft edges. Stars fade into the glow of muted pink rising from the horizon, splitting the sky between day and night. The smell of damp earth, decaying leaves and wood permeates the cool mist. A pocket of time in between, the landscape taking its first waking breaths of the day. Here your senses are shifted, you are existing in the moment of change.
A sense of belonging and not belonging. Of having no purpose or impact, being emerged in time. Feeling the elements wrapped around you, gently meeting the edge of your existence. Being still in a moment of change, grounded in a transient state.
Walking with my parents as a child they would point out and identify flowers, birds and elements in the landscape. My dad taught me the names of the constellations. We spent time walking in woods, exploring moors, foraging in hedgerows and on holiday in Devon I remember swimming in crystal clear rivers. My knees skimming over giant flat boulders under the peppered fragmented shadows from leafy branches. Sunlight rippling through the water. On beaches with clay rich cliffs we dug out fossils and filled pockets with ancient shells, sharks teeth and belemnites. These are the moments that stick in my memory, the forming of a connection with the world. Existing in the natural environment, spending time exploring, absorbing, experiencing and observing.
Running ahead on walks through bluebell valleys collecting rhododendron flower heads on a stick. Stacked sculptural layers of soft pink and purple trumpets. A collection and a composition.
At night time I could stay up to watch natural history or science fiction programs. My escape was art, drawing, painting, doodling, making. After bedtime I disappeared into books, secretly under the covers travelling to other lands. Feeding my inner world, making sense of the outside. Imaginings. Curiosity and wonder embedded somewhere in my makeup. Sometimes hidden in my life journey and then rediscovered and surfacing. Now to explore materials, play with surface and colour and interact with environments: experiences, imaginings and journeys combine. The collecting and compositions continue, running ahead when I can along tide lines and hedgerows. Catching interpretations and thoughts in sketchbooks, or in a photographic moment. Art school helped me to re visit the world around me, shifting perceptions and seeing possibilities. Opportunities to communicate, connect. Seeing potential in the fabric of the world. I read New Scientist for inspiration, watched natural history documentaries. Researching artwork that transformed the everyday and ordinary into organic or fantastic forms. Breaching boundaries. Some elements remain in my practice, although it has shifted and evolved with constraints of space and time. Still woven into the threads, a sum of the parts of my story.
Creative Life in Suffolk