Writing about art when its someone else work can be much easier to do. I generally avoid writing about my own work, as often I get muddled because of the multi layered aspects of it. I fluctuate between the process, my intent, how I felt when I made it and what I see in it now. My work takes a long time to make, as even when I believe its finished often I leave it laying around and add something to it much later on. This can be a year later, its as if I need the distance to actualise it. It takes on a few different compositions, but when its that final moment, I tend to be sure of it. This length in time also adds complexity to the way I think about the work, as it keeps morphing.
Art is its own language, it is symbolic and often holds unconscious messages. The narrative is not linear, it is felt, intuitive, emotional and poetic. Connection to the world begins with sensory experiences, moves into the symbolic and then becomes language as we become more cognitive. I do not want to be so cognitive in my process. However the artworld wants me to be, to find words, to engage in this intellectual game. As an art psychotherapist, I have freed myself from this, and I am grateful to the profession for giving me permission to break away from it.
This is why I have taken up the pursuit of poetry, words become rhythm and symbols in poems. Its a different kind of writing game. Whether or not I am any good at poetry or not, I am not sure it even matters, its the process, the feeling and intuition.
I'm going to try and write a sensible sounding artist statement for this website, in an attempt to find something that will be interesting for others to read, something clear and as accurate as I can make it.
Below is the piece of text that I had on the site before this renewal.
"I live in the city and I travel to the sea, everyday.
I wish I was the sea, moving in a perfect state of rhythm. Often I bask in the simplicity of the sound and movement of the waves.
City life is similar, the traffic moves in rhythms, the hum of human voices in the busy streets is like birds on the rocks and things corrode the same way. Nature is everything.
Electricity moves through our phones, computers, eyes and minds, supercharging our landscapes with a connected heartbeat and pulse.
I use what is around me; the ever changing and moving cityscape of Bristol, as well as the natural landscapes of Somerset. I submerge myself in them thoughtfully and connect their rhythms. As the flow takes me over, ideas wash up on the shores of my own mind and come through me into the materials I use in a way that is intuitive, and somatic.
I explore the body within the landscape, what the container of the skin feels like, and the existential experience of being. Body parts come up in my work, overtly and sometimes in abstract forms.
Creating, for me, is a way of understanding the world, abstracting elements from environments, tacitly exploring and figuring things out. The connection of inner and outer landscapes meets when I feel symbiotic with my material of choice.
I am influenced by weather, femininity, queer sexuality, landscapes that are natural, man made and domestic, as well as the body, giffs and repetition. My practice has evolved into drawings, ceramics, sculpture mainly but not exclusively. Working as an art psychotherapist is part of my creative practice. As I engage in the subtle conflict and emotional subterfuge of self-exploration with others and myself, I find that making artwork is essential for expelling unconscious and emotional material that I carry".