All in artist residency
It’s easy to get lost in the big picture, the huge landscape and forget the details, That’s when I find it's necessary to pull focus. Which is what I did by visiting Petra’s stone collection, the inspirational garden of Iceland’s most famous stone collector, naturalist and stone artist.
How do you become unstuckable as an artist? When inspiration dries up, or you’re feeling too tired or stressed to create, what do you do? That’s where a daily practice can save your day and inspire you to keep going.
You can never un-know what you know. In the midst of extraordinary beauty at my artist residency at Cove Park, I discover that just over the peninsular is the UK’s largest nuclear submarine facility. It is almost as if, in the midst of beauty, we need to scar the landscape in the most spectacularly catastrophic way. How to make art to reflect this?
Every time I get nervous or feel under pressure to perform, I remember to let the work develop itself, to find its own story that needs to be told. This is what happened when my photograph of two chimneys became a metaphor for dispossession in a series of artworks devised at my artist residency.
Stone Circles, houses of stone and hills of ancient rock form a narrative of time, place and human interaction with this animate landscape in the Outer Hebrides. They are the beginning of my Stone Stories project.
The first part of any residency is always reconnaissance, getting to know the lie of the land. Much of the work is site-specific, responding to the new environment with your own ways of creating. Ideas emerge as you walk the landscape. Lots of photos, sketches and writing. As I write, I right my path and find my way forward.
In order to apply for an artist residency you have to be prepared to pay. The costs could include flights, residency costs and living allowances. Which is why many artists apply for grants to help offset the costs.
How do you apply for an artist residency and how do you prepare to go to one? There are three key components in each application process that I use when writing my submissions. You need to articulate what you do, why you do it and how it fits the application criteria.
Why go on artist residencies? While you need a proposal to submit with your residency application, the work you make might completely go off on a tangent. I’ve learnt the best thing is to stay flexile and adapt to your new surroundings.
Artists residencies can propel you forward in your art practice. This month I finished my fourth artist residency in four years and reflect on the top #10 lessons I’ve learned from all four.
It takes a community of like minded, inclusive thinking creatives to nourish an artist’s talent and confidence so they can breakthrough to success. An artist residency gives you the time, space and support to enable those breakthroughs.
What happens when you make a quantum leap? Your artwork conceptually ‘jumps’ and you move into a whole new method of creating. Making these leaps means you draw deep from the hidden parts of your imagination which are waiting to be released.
Lots of experimenting in the rain and mud with paper in this first week of my artist residency at BigCi in Bilpin. Pouring paper pulp and getting ideas together in readiness for our public Open Day on Sunday 4th April where I will be demonstrating my pulp pouring techniques.
How do we inhabit a space, occupying it with traces of our own existence in place and time? It’s an interesting question to ponder as I consider occupancy with my upcoming exhibition Occupy and resuming an artist residency in the Blue mountains. What traces of my own life and occupancy will I leave behind?
I believe that we are called to places; by the mountains, the rocks, the sea. Places of strong energy vibrations are portals of time and connection points with the cosmos which can trigger spiritual awakenings within us.
I am creating portals, circular windows of opportunity for people as they awaken to remember who they truly are. I stitch jigsaw pieces of the world with parachute lines of safety as we drift together through turbulent clouds of uncertainty.
When we are advised to keep our distance, we need to know that human touch is possible, even if only virtually. Create though this crisis. Make a handprint to proclaim: I am here. Take a photograph of it to send to your family and friends. This is how you can connect with them, to show you care and are thinking of them. High 5 with a handprint.
