experience

Playful Palimpsests

| Sheree

I go to my local probably about once a week if not more. I was brought up next to a library, in Bradford and in Newburn. They were places I could go to for some sense of freedom and adventure.

The librarians knew me and would recommend books to me and events. They wouldn’t rush me, I was welcome to stay as long as I wanted.

Today, I love to pop in to see the book sales at my local libraries. As I have a few on my doorstep now. I flit between them, collecting worn and torn books that I repurpose.

I was brought up to know it was ‘wrong’ to write in books. They were sacred in our home. Probably because we were poor and if we bought books, usually from the indoor market in town, we knew it was money we couldn’t afford to spend on books. But my parents spent it anyway, as they valued books, learning and education. It was our way out of poverty.

I wonder what they would say now, if they saw what I did to books?

10p is all I pay for big, colourful children’s books, withdrawn from library stock. I have to feel the paper first though before I buy them. Even if only 10p, too shiny the page and the paint won’t grip it as well. The paint just swirls around and doesn’t stick.

I like my pages rough and matt finished. Ready to absorb whatever I put down on it.

This sketchbook was my side hustle for the last month. Side hustle to my main creative sketchbook. Here I just lay down colour and see what happens.

I like when what’s underneath the paint bleeds through. I like when the different layers of paint and pencil and pen bleeds through to the surface too.

It’s like a palimpsest. The marks beneath is the feeling I’m after. The haunting, the trace, the evidence of time and the passage of time. The archive is present now.

Playing with my stabilo woodies!

| Sheree

I went straight into the fun today in one of my creative sketchbooks.

And it all came from a colour. A colour I created when prepping my pages for my visual journaling practice this morning.

Lemon yellow and sap green came together on the page to create a golden green colour that I wanted to explore more.

So I smeared it into my creative sketchbook and went from there. I’d seen Enas Satir’s Daloka- Girls’- songs pottery series and they made me smile.

Their facial expressions and just the black and white starkness of them.

So I took a smile and nose from there to create this piece which when I look at it, makes me smile.

Hey I’m all for sharing smiles, with those who see me and smile back!

just mercy

| Sheree

I love me a great film.

A film where black people are centred.

A film where injustice is tackled head on and over time is recognise and overturned.

Just Mercy, a film starring Michael B Jordan and Jamie Foxx, co-written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, is one such film.

I return to this film , which is a true story about the wrongful incarceration of Walter McMillan and how Bryan Stevenson worked tirelessly for his release, a lot when I want to feel hope. When I want to feel that all is not lost and that there is another way, or option. There’s always something else/other/more we can do/say{BE}.

The point is, not to give up. To not lose hope. To not lose love.

This extract from the script is a prison scene when Jamie Foxx playing Walter McMillan, on death row for a murder he didn’t commit, is trying to calm down his friend Herbert Richardson played by Rob Morgan whose execution is the very next day.

“Look at them pine trees that been growin’ since way before we was born, and gonna keep on growin’ way after we gone. They been through all the same shit we been through and more, but they still dancing in the breeze.”

This part stays with me. This right here is what sticks to my bones. That wisdom from nature. That guidance from nature.

Even while going through shit, and going through shit from time, they still be dancing.

Yes, to this. Yes to still living through it all on our own terms, in our own ways. and experiencing/ creating/holding on to the joy.

Come won’t you dance with me x

They want this heaviness to snuff our light out

| Sheree

As an artist, I feel everything. I feel what everyone else is feeling.

This heaviness is manufactured to snuff my light out. To destroy my hope.

As an artist I’m here to create hope. As an artist, I create pockets of hope. Safe spaces where we can create alternative worlds.

Safe spaces where we can be free, if only for a little while.

I’ve been forgetting my task. My service. I’ve been struggling under the heaviness of it all.

Do you feel it too? That heaviness?

I’ve been forgetting to take my medicine. That’s what artists can bring to the world. Moments of medicine.

Here feast on this image. Take a moment here, in this safe space, let down this heaviness. Breathe.

We be good, together.

Late night painting

| Sheree

First time working on canvas for about 3 years! It was good to play without pressure or to demand.

It was good to just let go and see what happened. Jumping int the unknown is getting easier with practice.

I found working on 2 canvases at once made them less precious, less important.

I suppose it’s that ‘not putting your eggs all in one basket’ mentality.

It was good to let go of control and the fear. I suppose this is the only time I chose ‘doing’ over {BEING}. When creativity is involved!