I have this thing with nature. This deep-rooted connection, it’s my go-to place to find calm and perspective, to just be, to get inspired, to trust life in all its crazy forms.
No better place than to go on a residency in a nature park in Spain at the stunning Arteventura, where ecological living is at the heart of everything. And so I immersed myself in the natural world and started sketching the local trees with inks.
I started a new series of works on paper. The joy of playing and searching and making and unearthing new ideas through the process is for me often a good starting point for a new body of work, a way of introducing new elements into the work, of keeping things fresh. This is all still experimental.
Among other things, I took inspiration from the wonderful and wacky native holm trees in the Natural Park Sierra de Aracena. What also struck me were the rather worrying stories of lack of water and the threat this forms to the future of this nature park. It inspired me to use the element of water more directly in how I make the work. So I ended up drawing while my paper was floating in a bath of ink for the initial layers of the work. Then some touch-ups afterwards as you can see.
It’s all a work in progress and I can’t wait to see where this will eventually lead to, how my ideas will click together. Sometimes making art feels like a treasure hunt and I love that part of not quite knowing and the excitement of what I will find within the work and within myself…
I have succeeded in getting the diesel engine going and made some progress on a new body of work I have been thinking about for the last while.
How could you not be inspired in a studio this enormous, this bright and spacious?
A huge thank you to Create Louth for generously supporting my residency with an Arts Act Grant.
