the practice
my visual art practice began in my teenage years. i was fortunate to have an art teacher who saw how the constraints of trying to produce something in a particular style tied me up. she told me, just write a statement about how this artist inspired what you are creating and that will be enough to meet curriculum guidelines. such simple words, but the depth of possibility this opened in me meant that my creative impulses began to flow. pastel and charcoal were my medium then and though i have experimented with different things since, i returned to chalk pastels and stayed there. it is visceral for me. the kinaesthetic sense of moving with the crumbling pigments allows me to feel what is emerging in a deeply somatic way.
my visual art practice is a genuine process of discovery. my only intention is to express what is moving in my inner world, in the sensations of my body, in the dreams. i don’t set out to draw a particular image, i start with a single line, spontaneously, freely, with complete abandon. sometimes a slash across the page, sometimes an intentional and contained line. through this practice, my body is the bridge between what is moving within me and the page in front of me. my somatic intelligence tells me where to place a line, where to rest, where to move.
sometimes in the early phases of creating, there is a point where, as i see forms start to emerge on the page, i have an urge to turn it into something that my mental mind is trying to understand. i have an urge to concretise it. it is at this point that i put down my pastels. for hours, days, weeks, months — however long it takes for me to be able to drop back into my body and return with complete openness and curiosity again.
what arrives is always a surprise. the image reveals itself line by line until i stand back and see what it is. sometimes i work in the dark, so that i am not distracted by how the clarity of light attempts to distort the process. sometimes i work very close to the page, so that i am not distracted by the whole. sometimes i step back and just sit in contemplation, until the next right line emerges. at times sitting for hours, held by the words of lao tzu “do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself?”
— lao tzu, tao te ching
this is the same approach as my writing. testimony, not performance. creating from experience toward archetype. reaching down beyond the thinking mind to express what is moving.
beauty is not the aim. revelation is.
the works on these pages are fragments of larger pieces — most of which remain private. what you encounter here are echoes. what you bring to them is your own. what they touch in you, is your own revelation.