Amelia Batchelor and myself with artworks visualising peace in the world, October 2020
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.
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Finding Peace I & Finding Peace II - 20 x 20cm 2024
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.
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Stitching layers of paper circles together - you can see the pricked holes on the outside layer.
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.
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Cyanotype image of wallpaper design printed on handmade kozo paper
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.
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Marks in the sand, Danjo Garan Sacred Temple Complex, Koyasan, Japan.
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.
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Little pieces of me - the titanium knee inspired by my knee replacement x-ray
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.
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The sheer joy of washing is captured in this still from a video shoot in 2023 with fellow artists Claudia Collins and Catherine Browning with a scene from our ‘green washing’ film made in Cornwall, UK.
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.
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My grandparents windup clock, daily drawing from 9th October 2015
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.
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Framing my walking stick
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.
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Shadow self, walking (with my mobility aide)
I have worked with shadows before. Taking photographs and drawing the lines they make that are a part of the object yet separate entities in themselves. Like putting a frame around pain and learning to dance with the shadow self.
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