How to encapsulate a year that started with a bang then abruptly skidded to a stop half way through as I struggled to overcome post surgery pain. Learning to be still, rest and recover was a huge challenge. Through all these months good and not so good, I kept writing and making art to document my journey. An epic year to share in this Year in Review 2024 blogpost.
Have you ever felt your ideas have sprung from ‘out of the blue’? Yet the colours, processes and themes which have caught your interest along the way have all pointed you in your current direction. That is what I have discovered about my abiding love for the colour blue and the joy of cyanotype printmaking.
Creative minds often get bored doing the same thing repetitively. Yet there is comfort in repetition, where tasks are so ingrained they become almost automatic. I’ve discovered that art and exercise are good companions; both can build skills and confidence through incremental, repetitive action taking.
You don’t always have to ‘think big’. There is a move back to sustainable and small, like tiny houses that use less space and resources. So too with art, small is making a comeback with so many end of year exhibitions asking for artworks less than 30cm . It’s a great way to make art affordable and accessible for buyers and especially requiring less time and outlay for artists.
Sometimes it may take years for ideas to come to fruition. Artists need to keep hope alive so their work is received by receptive audiences, even if their art is ahead of its time. That’s why it is important to hold fast to stories of hope, to keep persevering, keep creating, keep showing up for yourself until the time is ripe for ideas to take root and flourish.
Finding ways to personally connect your art with the public and activate art conversations can consume a lot of an artist’s time. But making art and culture accessible can be as simple as creating a pop up art event, staging an artisan market or taking your art to the streets. Have art, will travel.
When systems fall into chaos, it’s time to get creative and start imaginative mapping. Creating a visual representation of how you want life to look helps bring that future into reality. Chaos and entropy are natural parts of systems under pressure and from them can emerge new order and stability. Hold that thought!!!
Our lives, like footprints visible in the snow, are brief. To practice the art of living is to embrace the skills we have, to master acceptance, to change what can be changed and release unrealistic expectations. As an elder, this is an act of embodying wisdom.
We are taught to reach for perfection, yet that sets us up for failure every time. Printmaking in any form has a strong ‘perfection’ element and to make blurry prints which messy edges is not considered to be technically correct. Yet what if you reframe that idea to turn seeming failures into successes. Perhaps it is a truer reflection of living life in all its messiness.
When one image is not enough to tell a story, then artist books are a great way to combine pictures with text. I have been wanting to find a way to show pain through its relief and have started planning the structure for an artist book. How the materials and narrative work together is an exciting journey of discovery.
Rejection is not the end of the world, although it may feel like it at the time. Applying for art opportunities is part of the process of being an artist, whether it is for exhibitions, collaborations, residencies, grants or any other project you dream up. Not all applications are successful, which makes the ones you do get accepted for even sweeter.
Imagine a world of peace. On this upcoming 18th year of the lighting the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland, I look back at my own peace activations. In 2020 I created a paper world of peace filled with green forests, clear blue waters and white polar icecaps. As I made it I imagined the activisms for peace throughout the world. Now more than ever activating peace is vital to us and our planet.
Its a challenge of our times to find peace when all around descends into chaos. I have been repurposing circles of paper I made during the pandemic when we were all forced to stay within our homes. These circles became cyanotypes, the blue and white layers become portals of peace.
There's a big difference between stitching paper and stitching cloth. When I'm using cloth, I connect to generations of women who have created their own clothes and 'useful' household items. When I'm stitching paper its all about the story, the art of storytelling with paper and thread.
I love the way patterns can be interpreted in art through repetitive motifs. When printed as cyanotype images, the blue and white designs can be as simple or intricate as the project requires. A bold stencilled figure traversing a landscape created from cardboard boxes is another way to tell a personal story.
Where do we put our feet and how do we walk? What are the marks we leave? The transience of life as expressed in pilgrims' footsteps was inspiration to entice me into the studio to reactivate my love of printmaking.
I am appreciating the strong titanium plates that now live within me. Playing with stencils of their abstracted shapes makes visible an inner landscape to explore as I emerge from creative hibernation.
It is an incredibly humbling experience to feel vulnerable and unable to do simple tasks for ourselves. Ordinary activities like washing or cooking can seem impossible, yet there is joy in these routine activities which show we are alive and able to look after our own needs.
Post operative recovery takes time and endurance. I find myself living in a liminal space where I ponder the nature of time. How to experience a minute, which seems so short yet can be a long duration when filled with pain.
I’ve found a new friend and companion, my walking stick. I visualise all the repetitive exercises I do during the day within the shape of my walking stick handle and draw my journey of post operative recovery. Round and round we go as my steps become more confident and less wobbly. A landscape of days and journey lines.
