creative

An Archives of Memories, Feelings and Skyr

| Sheree

This is one of my favourite images from my extensive collection.

I know exactly when and where it was taken. Westfjords Residency, Iceland, Feb/March 2017.

This was my go to breakfast. Coffee, cornflakes and Skyr, Icelandic protein enriched yogurt. I love the colours, the composition. The items included. But most of all, I love the memories and feelings just looking at this image evokes.

It takes me back to that time of wonder and discovery during my second time to Iceland. A residency I gifted to myself, writing the application while teaching temporally; frustrated, longing to get out and create.

I stayed for two weeks in the shadows of the mountains, knee deep in snow most days until the thaw came with some greening of the landscape.

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing there back then. I just knew in my body that I needed to get away, gain inspiration from the landscape and {BE}.

I might not have completed much when I was out there, but I know when I returned the experience shifted my creativity and how I saw myself as a creative.

I saw glimmers of the Northern Lights during this retreat. Pale creamy wisps and trails in a dark navy sky. It was magical and a mystery.

This makes me think about my art-making practice and how most of the time I’m working in the dark, moving out of my comfort zone into the unknown, looking and listening hoping to catch a glimpses of magic and mystery in the process.

What’s created on the page, like this photography, is an archive, a record which when looked upon brings to the surface all the memories and feelings of the process, the experience once again experienced to the full with wonder and a smile.

Deciding ahead of time to navigate the discomfort

| Sheree

I would say for the last quarter of 2025, I was getting myself into a spin because I wanted to get back to painting but wasn’t.

I was spending my spare time on Pinterest scrolling through all these beautiful artworks wishing I was painting and knowing that when I did, my work was never that good. I’d fail and fall into the comparison trap.

The more I spent on Pinterest the more I longed to be painting but the further away I became from my practice.

Until … as I mentioned in a previous post, I gifted myself the 30 Day Sketchbook Challenge with Insight Creative created by Cheryl Taves.

At day 26 yesterday, and I came to the page late as it was the first day back at school after the Christmas break and girl was I tired. Still am and it was touch and go if I was going to make it to the sketchbook. But I thought to myself if I can get up and do the fucking dishes, then that shift of energy is going to get me into my cave a create.

And so be it. The focus was about risk taking. How we might be okay with it at the beginning of a piece, be loose and alive but to hold this energy to the end of the process, not to overwork things by holding on too tight but maybe take some risks was the challenge.

Using browns was the first risk for me – I’ve probably shared it before how I have a hating relationship with brown. But not so much now. My feelings are softening towards the colour. Practice using browns helps.

And then when I thought I was finishing up with this piece I just stopped. I didn’t carry on to complete or tidy up but left it edgy and raw in a way because I feel it still has a fresh energy and isn’t overworked or tight.

Keeping my sketchbook practice isn’t about making good or bad art pieces. It’s about information. What am I learning as a result of the time spent within my creative sketchbook?

Like yesterday, what have I learnt or better understand about the role risk-taking plays in the creative process? Keeping a creative sketchbook practice isn’t a great, safe space to take risks, explore my style and voice at the same time as really leaning into this place of discovery for me and of me.

I know for a fact that knowing this creative sketchbook is for my eyes only means I’m not performing or looking for feedback or admiration or criticism. It reduces the pressure to make art, formal art-making, good or bad art. It’s play and exploratory feeding my curiosity rather than my ego.

It’s a place where I can be alone in the company of my thoughts and feelings and offer myself kindness and compassion and no judgment at the same time.

I’m glad I said ‘yes’ to myself and my art-making practice. It’s strengthening that muscle of saying ‘yes’ to my art-making rather than ‘no’, more often than not.

A Creative Sketchbook, Dec 2025

| Sheree
My creative sketchbook
My creative sketchbook rules

I’m not sure how my creative sketchbook differs from my visual journal. Intention maybe.

Perhaps, I think , I’m attempting to develop my art practice within a designated space. A study maybe.

I haven’t really been in the thick of my art making practice since the preparation for my Baltic exhibition back in 2022-3.

This was quickly followed with the writings and (re)drafts of Darkling, my poetry/hybrid collection published in October 2024.

After this 2025 has been a period of extended rest and refusal.

But something has been niggling me. The desire to create with paint again. the desire to play without expectations and outcomes/ products.

I’ve just scratched the itch through scrolling through Pinterest. Adding another abstract or landscape painting to a board that I’ll probably not look at again.

But it satisfied this niggling feeling. Until it didn’t.

It was going back into the classroom. Completing a few days of supply that pushed me over the edge.

The time I gave away for money. The time I’d lost pursuing my own pursuits. And realising that I wasn’t pursuing all the pursuits I wanted to pursue in the time I had/have.

So out came a creative sketchbook, inspired by the 30 days sketchbook challenge created by Cheryl Taves over at Insight Creative.

This is as much as I’m willing to share for now about the challenge, my creative sketchbook, processes and insights.

One of my rules is that it’s just for my eyes only. I want to see how this rule changes my practice. I want to create without fear but with curiosity. I want to give myself all the freedom without worrying about what others will think or say or comment on.

It’s not like I’m hanging on other people’s responses and reactions but I have gotten into a habit of just sharing anything and everything on my blog and I’m curious to see what happens when I keep things to myself.

Just for my eyes, heart, and soul only.

So far I’m enjoying the process of the challenge and I’m reflecting and paying attention to what makes my heart sing, what’s my creative vocabulary, what pushes my energies.

Do doubt whatever I explore within my creative sketchbook will be showing up in everything that I create. In everything who I {BE}. For sure.

Returning to Iceland

| Sheree

Gun­nar V. An­drés­son Press Pho­to­grapher │Half a Cen­tury Through the Lens

The last time I was in Iceland was June 2018. I was here running a creative retreat for women. On the Thursday of the week away, I facilitated a workshop at Reykjavik Museum of Photography. Probably shared what I created during that session on here somewhere. I know it included my mum and a glacier.

It was an amazing retreat, with everything provided for the participants. Even brought in my friend Sarah as the caterer. It was a week that had great highs and achievements with the costs being me exhausted and in debt.

I’ve always wanted to return to Iceland since then but a global pandemic, divorce and financial insecure got in the way. Until, I really got sick of saying, one day, and just booked the flight back in September 2024 and making sure it happened.

Always on a shoestring, but still doing it because I’m worth it, I’m staying in Reykjavik for the week. Staying in a hostel again and watching my budget. But it’s good to be back.


Gun­nar V. An­drés­son Press Pho­to­grapher │Half a Cen­tury Through the Lens

My first time to Iceland was 2016, the year after the shit hit the fan experience which will be 10 years ago tomorrow.

It was standing in this photography museum that I began to see myself again as a creative. Iceland helped me heal after that episode in my life and it was here that I made a promise to get my work within this space. With the women’s retreat I achieved that dream, not only working here but also sharing my words within the space.

Things don’t happen easily. There needs to be a vision and the hard work behind it. I’m not afraid of hard work. I’m more afraid of having dreams and never allowing them to come true. Because of outside barriers and obstacles I raise up within.

I came to Iceland a ruined woman. But I still had the strength of character and belief in self to grow and take risks and invest in myself.

Investing in myself is never wasted. I’m here for a week, a week that promises rain, wind and dropped temperatures. I could allow it to stop play. But I won’t. I’m here and I’m here to fill my pot by any means necessary.

For Blackbirds

| Sheree
Book cover

Things are happening this Autumn.

I was invited to submit my chapbook, for blackbirds pushing against glass, to a new press, The Wildheart Press, created by Eleanor Cheetham.

I was part of Eleanor’s Soulbook course offering in 2023 where I had the time and space to explore my creative fugitivity. Breaking the rules were welcome.

So Eleanor was familiar with my work when she approached me to submit my feral words to her press. I jumped at the chance because the words were already created. This was an opportunity to share my words further. And I just love supporting a person and a press who recognises that I do not colour within the lines. My writing does not stay on the straight and narrow path. My words like to wander and meander and that is mighty fine with me.

I’m grateful to find a home for them in The Wildheart Press.

Website image

Please consider ordering an advance copy of the chapbook. There are four other chapbooks coming out for the Autumn series too. Go and check them out

There will be a launch reding event on the evening of 26th September if you’re interested in meeting the writers and hearing our words.

Check out The Wildheart Press for details.

Writing Crime Fiction – one page at a time

| Sheree

I think from the time of my MA in Creative Writing, 2003 at Northumbria University, I’ve had the dream to write a crime novel.

Reading crime fiction is a guilty pleasure of mine from being young. They scare me and thrill me at the same time. I don’t try to guess who’s the killer or kidnapper or criminal. I’m just there in the thick of it; engrossed.

There has been times through the years, where I’ve said, this is the time, I’m going to write the crime novel. Start the reading and taking notes, fleshing out the story. Only to get a few weeks down the line and my patience has worn thin. I’ve lost the spark. I’m hit with the massive FEAR of failing.

It’s like a don’t give myself the time and space to crash and burn. That I jump to the end and make it all crap and useless, only after writing a few pages. That it’s okay to fail as nothing is perfect, super deluxe on the first pass.

But I think I’ve come up with an idea. What if I trick myself into thinking all I’m doing is writing a page. Not a whole crime novel, just a page. How would that work out for me?

Page 1

The beach is empty. The sky cloudless, grey moving to blue with the sun being up for over an hour. The usual dog walkers are out marking the sand with prints and shit. Some clean up after their dogs like good citizens. While others never look back.

Littered with glossy seaweed and feathers, as if a bird battle has gone down, the beach is flanked by a rotting pier. Or wooden construction used in the past to mark out bays within the sea for long forgotten trade. Now just an eye sore and gathering point for the bored youth trapped in this seaside resort.

But down there within the shadows and the shallows is one naked white body. A woman, lying on her stomach, arms beside her sides, palms turned up. Her blond head is turned towards the sea, tangled with seaweed and sand. The sun beams down on her bare arse resembling a conch. Her swollen face reveals gaping blue lips around cracked teeth.

It’s a chocolate lab sniffing out crabs around the pier who finds her body. Barking to its owner to come see, gulls flock down to squark the find too. Then they circle, eyes piercing the sea, maybe looking for her missing feet.

Redraft with commentary coming tomorrow!

Solvitur ambulando

| Sheree

Solvitur ambulando – “it is solved by walking.” Coined by the 4th-century-B.C. Greek philosopher Diogenes while attempting to response to the question of whether motion is real. Diogenes got up and started moving. He walked to try and solve the problem.

“It is solved by walking.”

The women from The Angelou Centre Walking

I read yesterday that there are no new beginnings. No beginnings because when we start something, we are already coming at it from the middle. We’ve already been in the thick of it, knee deep in the things that are important to our lives. The issues that hold our attentions and hearts. So when we start working on them, we’re already in the middle of the experience for us.

When we finish the project it’s not the end it’s just a marker on the journey. The journey will continue beyond this or that point. We keep on trying to make sense of our lives. To experience what is in our bodies, hearts and souls as long as we live. Is this not the whole point of our human existence? Of our creativity?

To get clear on our view of the world, or even our experience of the world as we move through the world and share these asides, moments and realisations with others through our creativity?

Solvitur ambulando

Diogenes of Sinope

There is nothing that cannot be solved through walking. There is a latin quote that says this phrase in just two words but who am I to know latin or even to hold this knowledge in my head. It is a foreign language, a foreign culture to me, living in my Black body but it is still passed off as something I should know. As an educated person in Western society that I should know. Not that it is alien to me and is not mine.

My heritage and culture, is denied to me, or is hidden, or re-constructed on a pile of lies. It takes my time and effort to unearth it all, for me and for others. Still through all that effort, to unearth and bring to light, fact and fiction, it’s not recognised. It’s not valued and is dismissed as not being good enough.

White Supremacy Culture is alive and kicking, And I keep kicking up against it no matter what I do or be. Try to do or try to be. I’ll always be found wanting.

One Tired Goddess

| Sheree
Visual journal 16/05

This past week has been way too busy for my liking. But it was to my liking in a way as I found it stimulating and so much food for thought.

What I need now is rest though in order to process it all and at some point it did get to stimulation overload.

My creative pot over flows and I need to channel this into something. Something I produce in order to process this last week somehow. as well as how it sits with my overall practice and how I show up in the world.

Showing up at the page each day has helped; mining my thoughts and feeling and reactions onto these pages has been a support.

I just need some more space and rest now to integrate it all. Yes that’s what I’m seeking integration.

And again this is where my visual journal steps up/ in/ through me to support this journey of becoming.