art
What are some of your essential tools?
Recently I’ve been asked a few questions about my practice and process with my artwork. One question which struck a cord was, what are some of your essential tools for creating?
My practice changes but what I can say is that I’ve fallen in love with mark-making while completing #100daysofabstracts, so anything that can manipulate paint on the page is something I want to get my hands on.
My trusty old disused credit card is always by my side as I use it to create the background for my visual journaling, but lately this has been accompanied by a Catalyst pebble sculptor No.6 white, a plaster’s trowel and a spaghetti scoop.
I love creating mixed media layers of papers, pencil, pastels, gesso and acrylic paint and then scraping layers away so the past is revealed.
Take the term, palimpsest which I’ve come to understand through my writing practice as a piece of paper where the text has been scraped or washed off so that it can be reused but each use is still visible, like a ghost.
I see the abstracts I’ve been creating in the same light when I create layers and scrap areas back so previous layers or versions haunt the finished piece. I’ve always been interested in how to read history and heritage in light of the present so we can learn for the future, through these abstracts I’ve been exploring these concepts visually.
My Favourite Influencer
I’ve started my second #100daysproject of 2019. Joining in with the official challenge, #The100dayproject, I’ve decided to focus on created images where I see myself reflected, #100daysofblackwomen.
I’ve purposely not set up any long, drawn out rules. All I have to do each day is create a face or figure of a black woman. Far too often in art, if a Black Woman is present, she is not represented in an empowering or positive way. She might be the servant, or a sexualised object, ridiculed and degraded.
I want to look upon art and see my multifaceted identity reflected; the good and bad, the truth.
It’s only been in the last few years really that I’ve embraced this practice of creating, painting black women. I know taking Painting the Feminine with Dirty Footprint Studios, hosted by Connie Solera has influenced this development. Creating within a supportive group of women and gently pushed into our own ideas of what femininity can be has been a catalyst for
my explorations and expressions.
A recent discovery has pushed me further into my own visual language. This has been finding the artwork of Mystele Kirkeeng and then watching her create her pieces.
Watching Mystele and learning about her practice and techniques gave me permission to trust my own messy process. Seeing her process made me value my own for the first time and to lean into it more. It’s such a glorious feeling to finally believe in what I create at the same time as not worrying or stressing about whatever anyone else thinks about my artwork. Mystele reminds of the joy and excitement I can have for my own creativity. And this is priceless.
The Phoenix Soul
The Phoenix Soul started out as a digital magazine but now it is so much more; a collaborative blog, a creative community, a life-line for women who put creativity at the centre of their lives.
I’ve been lucky to be featured within the digital magazine a few times over the years. Issue 60, Inner Truth, saw me sharing about my embracing of my authenticity and intuition. Issue 62 Whole Hearted Living, details my love of getting into the sea and swimming with nature. The thrill. The medicine.
And I will soon feature within the collaborative blogging space as one of the new artist profiles. But until then I wanted to share from the blog a post by the creator of The Phoenix Soul, Amanda Fall. In this post she explores #bodypositivity through art journaling. And as someone who is on the path of self-love and body acceptance whatever my size, I found this share and video inspiring. I hope you do too.
Where I work
I wish I could display a wide open space with large tables, easels, storage for paintings and tools. With natural light streaming through so many windows that the space is forever bright. But I can’t.
I can’t afford a studio. If I’m organised, I can use the spare room which is my son’s room when he returns for visits from Uni. But recently, it’s become a dumping ground for when I’ve come in from an event or job and I’m too tired to sort out my bags. The room soon becomes unable to get into and the clutter enters my mind.
I’m much better being a mobile artist. Packing a bag and going to a hotel room to work is my ideal working space. And recently with having to travel for union work and family gatherings, I’ve managed to monopolise clean and white hotel rooms to create colourful, vibrate paintings be that my abstracts or my portraits of black women. And it has been welcomed and liberating.
So yes I don’t have a regular space to create at home but I don’t allow that to stop me from continuing to explore my visual language.
Taking a walk …
Sharing My Joy
Just popping back in here quickly to highlight that I’ve created a new page all about my practice of visual journaling. For the past 3 years, this visual and creative practice has been my lifeline. It has not only got my head straightened out but it has also been my playground where big dreams have been declared and explored and come to fruition.
I do look upon this practice as magical. And the special thing is, everything is inside me waiting to come out. Through the use of paints, images, photography, collage, drawings, stamps and stickers, I get to tap into the magic that is inside of me, all the time, each day. No wonder I go all evangelical when I start to talk about visual journaling and share this practice. As it has quite literally changed my life.
Check out the new page in the portfolio and keep checking back as I continue to update it as well as develop the new ecourse to go with it.
Everyone visual journaling here we come.
Shifting Energy
I had the house to myself for the last two days. I thought I was going to vegetate indoors, enjoying the space but my body was calling for movement. I remembered a small sketchbook I’d purchased ages ago for working outdoors with. This was the perfect time to use it. I didn’t know what I was going to do or take with me but the mere thought of it got me excited and motivated to get out there.
I wrapped up and started walking in the direction of the sea. This was the first time I attempted to paint outdoors. Hence things didn’t go to plan. It was windy and cold and there were people. But I enjoyed the challenge and want to do it again and again.
And it was just great to be outside and enjoy the light. This is my favourite time of year and I allow it to slip away too quickly, as I get busy with work and commitments. But if I remember that the sky is blue and that getting out there shifts my energy, hopefully I’ll get in some more painting sessions outdoors.
Painting the Feminine
I have been blessed. Someone out there is watching me and liking what I’m doing as I share my journey with creativity and encourage more women to listen to their creative needs and wants and just do it.
I have been gifted a place on Connie Solera’s last session of Painting the Feminine; a painting ecourse where we take the time and space to explore feminine energy and wisdom.
I have completed this course twice before and was fixing to enrol on this final run but finances were just not on my side. But I sent my desires out into the Universe and they were answered with this gift.
I’m truly grateful for this opportunity to dive deeper, listening to my intuition and inner wisdom to paint from my soul and heart. I’m having such a sacred time, as painting becomes a daily practice as well as a special ritual of savouring each moment.
This piece is called: Trust. I think it’s all in their facial expressions. They are so in the know. I love them. I think I’ve found my tribe and they were inside me all along. I love that.
Living Wild Studios 