art
The Way I Feel Today
Feeling the need for more music in my life. Some classic tunes, hits and heart-felt vibes. Enjoy x
Breathing
New Month
I’m glad January is out of the way. We enter the new year with such high hopes and expectations that we, well me then, weigh the month down with it all.
It’s a dark time of the year in more ways than one. And I’m not sure when it became the norm but me and January fell out. I’ve been trying to heal the rift through time away, meeting friends, setting goals. But I have to be honest, I lost it there mid month. Maybe it was coming down after my Iceland trip. Or maybe it was post-Christmas fatigue. But I am glad to see the back of January.
February has already got a different feel to it. But correct me if I’m wrong but it is lighter, in more ways than one.
So as I stand at the threshold of this month, I set my intentions, take on new challenges and commitments for my creativity and soul.
I’ve returned to the body and my self-portraiture practice. Projects are started and will continue leading me where, I haven’t got a clue. Feeling my way through the process and practice and enjoying the journey.
Ice Ice Baby
I’ve been enjoying adding pieces one by one to my Folksy Store. It gives me a chance to reconnect with each piece and really focus on what it looks like as well as what it feels like.
The inspiration behind each piece is useful to pin down as within those hidden urges and nudges are clues where to go next. Where does it feel juicy to land next?
Ice Ice Baby displayed here in a mock up bed scene keeps taking me back to Iceland. All thoughts return to Iceland.
Red Oasis
Another digital print is offered up on the Folksy Store today.
Red Oasis, a vibrant print of an original abstract painting completed while
in Iceland earlier this month.
The inspiration for this piece reads as:
Red is powerful. Red is bold. Red is the colour of my soul.
When I need to feel uplifted, if I’ve fallen into a slump, forgotten who I am, I reach for red. Anything red will do. Ink, clothing, paint. Using red as a base colour instantly shifts my energy as well as the painting’s energy.
With Red Oasis, there’s a richness that is created by the choice of colours as well as the placing of such. The red is balanced by two other strong colours, yellow and green. Together, this juicy combination creates heat; like Earth’s inner core, oozing reds and yellows, entrapped within her green coat.
With the addition of white and black there is a cooling effect. A moment to pause and rest. But the eye is soon drawn back towards the red.
Red is passion. Red is love. Red is the colour of my soul.
Go on over to the store to check out the print with details.
Folksy Store
I was going to write, ‘for some reason’ …But I know my reason for real. And that reason is fear.
A couple of weeks ago, I opened a Folksy Store.
I felt the need to start selling my artwork. Starting with my abstract paintings, I’ve been quietly posting my items for sale onto the storefront and that’s it, leaving them there, hoping that someone would come along and buy.
I’m reminded of that song from Oliver- The Musical; Who will buy my sweet red roses? Two blooms for a penny.
The answer is no one. No one will buy if they don’t know you’re selling.
This has been the case with me, as I might have mentioned it in passing, or provided a link to the store in a profile, but I haven’t really been broadcasting it because of fear.
Fear has stopped me really opening my mouth and singing, who will buy?
Fear that no one will like my artwork. Fear that no one will buy my artwork.
But here’s the thing, I don’t create to sell. I create my work because of the way it makes me feel in the process. Because I gain so much joy and freedom from just playing with paint, moving it around the blank space, enjoying the feeling as something takes shape, comes into being which didn’t exist a moment before. Sharing this love, this joy, the feeling comes naturally to me.
It’s what I always do. I share my love in my artwork and writing through social posts. So why be fearful of sharing this love a little bit further, a little bit closer through offering to sell what I create to individuals
It’s only now, that I see the connection and see how this isn’t about the money, but about sharing little pieces of my soul. And being recognised and appreciated for doing so.
Check out the only listing at the moment, Blue Blush. But don’t worry more are coming and a selection will be showcased on this website. All listing will be made available at my beautiful Folksy store. Have I told you about my new store?
Artists’ Residencies
While coming to the end of my first trip to Iceland, while relaxing after time at The Blue Lagoon realising that I wanted to return to my life back home with Grace, I made a promise to myself that I would return to Iceland. I had to return.
It was from this point onwards that I started to look at artists’ residencies. I had just spent a week touring the whole of Iceland, so I was looking to base myself in one place for the duration of a residency in order to give myself a different experience.
The only place I couldn’t get to this first time around was the Westfjords. I’m not sure if I did this on purpose so I’d have to return or because it was about 8 to 9 hours drive to get there from Reykjavik off the Ring Road. This gave me a good enough reason to return as well as to fix my sights on a retreat in the Westfjords.
Through my research I found The Westfjords Residency.
“We seek to create encounters between nature and man, foreigner and local, the remote and the connected.“
A Danish-Belgian couple came to Thingeyri in 2005, started to rebuild an old, historic house into a coffeehouse called “Simbahöllin” in 2009. They then went on to create a cultural space with the Residency program being part of this. They offer group residencies that can be applied for but also self-directed individual residencies.
Before I worked out what I really wanted to do with my time in the Westfjords, I put in an application asking for a two week stay in winter 2017. I knew I had to immerse myself in the landscape of Iceland more, to explore this curious relationship and connection I had formed with this place. Basing myself in a remote and isolated fishing village was the ideal situation to do so.
I look back now at the time I spent in the Westfjords, while still in Iceland but this time in the south, and I wonder what happened then. What did I do with my time out there? What did I achieve, if anything?
I could judge this endeavour along productivity lines. I could judge it by the all-doing, all- going and all-singing-and-dancing routine that are the external markers of today’s society. It’s how we function.
But that would be missing the point. A residency or retreat, for that matter, is about the time and space away from the everyday not doing the usual. An opportunity to settle deeper into the self. It’s a chance to take your foot off the accelerator and to press on the brakes, gently. Allowing yourself to come to a complete stop and just be.
Breathe, deep breaths not the shallow sharp ones that you’ve been getting by on for years. But really deep juicy breaths that fill you up with wonder and awe and reignite you again from the core, from your true self.
Taking my cues from this definition of a residency then my time spent in the Westfjords was time well spent. I look forward to repeating the experience.
Walking on Ice
While walking in Reykjavík this morning, I was getting really ****ed off by the ice. I know ‘ice’ in Iceland, who would have thought! Soon as I walked out there , I had to watch my every step. I was getting really frustrated. I couldn’t enjoy my walk, take in the sights because I had to watch my feet. I needed to get downtown, see this exhibition, listen to that band. But I wasn’t getting anywhere fast. And to top it all I was walking like a duck. I wasn’t getting anywhere fast and my plans were all to pot.
But in the process I realised something really important. The ice meant I had to slow down and ditch those best laid plans and just go with the flow; the slow flow.
I needed to slow down. I also needed to re-evaluate my plans. Was it the end of the world? Nah.
I was fixing myself up for a right ruckus of a day not because of the ice but because of my attitude towards the ice. My attitude was all wrong. Shit happens. I wasn’t missing out but I was tuning in and savouring the experience. It quantity but quality.
Living Wild Studios 