Voyaging Home

Home - detail - paper pulp on found embroidery, (work in process)

One of the joys of travel is the that delicious sense of anticipation, voyaging into the unknown following the “second star to the left and straight on till morning.”

I’m now travelling from home with a book, re-reading The Unlikely Voyage of Jack de Crow. It’s about a perky little voyage from the canals in England through to the Black Sea in a red sailed Mirror dingy.

It’s the triangle of red sail that gets me every time. I have so many little collages which have that half moon shape of a boat topped by a triangle for a sail. Such iconic geometric shapes I can travel a world in.

I have been feeling decidedly nautical, reliving fishing boat memories with artwork using nets and knots and creating meditative spirals and medals for my Perky Patterns online mini course. Triangles and half moon circles feature of course!

It’s been a lot of fun travelling through my art journals to see that I have revisited the same themes throughout my work (and life) for years. A voyage around myself.

I grew up near the sea and crewed in sailing boats when I was a teenager. Some of my most exhilarating memories are of being on boats, feeling the sea spray and wind in my hair. I’ve got a particular soft spot for ferries - from Sydney ferries to those plying their way through the Mediterranean Sea between the Greek Islands.

Journeying from home is my new normal. I venture to the library for more books, I sail off into my imagination in my studio and create images of home as both my origin and destination.

The IAPMA (International PaperMakers and Paper Artists) 35th anniversary are coming up in April with the theme of Origins and Destinations. I thought to create artwork out of maps, but realised that since 2020 home is both my origin and destination.

So I travel with my geometric forms from my Perky Patterns course and share how to use text in my mini course Tantalising Text. All that as well as make art about home from home.

Meanwhile I read my favourite sea poems …

I must go down to the seas again

to the lonely sea and the sky

and all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by…

~ from Sea Fever by John Masefield.

Ulcinj Boat, collage with text 2018.