Yesterday marked 50 days of my creative sketchbook practice. 50 days of consistently turning up to the page to play and experiment.
What I’m learning is that I can trust myself to turn up for myself. I’m learning that my practice muscles can be strengthened. I’m learning that I love creating colour fields. It like what I create with visual journaling but different.
Here with these colour fields, there’s layers built up and then stripped back. Marked into. Scratched away to leave textures I like to see and feel. This practice is definitely expanding my palimpsest exploration and obsession.
I’m learning that I want this my creativity to be the main focus of my day and everything else is the add on, not the priority. Not the main meal. My creativity is my life source/force.
I’m practicing taking my creative sketchbook practice into my life. The attitudes, the risk-taking, the consistency, the trust in self and my art-making, these values and practices I’m carrying with me throughout my day, no matter who I come into contact with.
This creative sketchbook practice keeps me centred and focused on my feelings of joy and abundance. This practice keeps me present and checked in with myself, moment to moment.
On top of my visual journaling practice, this safe space of play and to {BE} me, is enough. Is more than enough to fill my day with bliss and connection. A practice that I’m finding opens up doors inside and outside of me, for me and others.
Visual journaling in community is always time well spent.
Even if it’s their first rodeo, to witness the freedom, the mess, the expansion as paint meets paper meets card. Bliss. Magic. A gift.
Walking out with their own visual journals clutched close to their chests, promising to carry on the practice themselves, now they’ve got the power within their hands, hearts and soul.
A job well done any time the visual journaling practice is passed on.
I do believe it makes us better human beings. Better to each other and ourselves. Softer, caring and well-nourished.
I’ll tell you the truth, I heard about Keith Porter Jr. 1 day ago.
Keith Porter Jr., a 43 year old father of two girls. He loves fishing and spending time with his family. Laughing.
Keith fundraised for battered women’s shelters, supported street artists, advocated for health services. With real family and friends, real daughters and a real presence in his community, Keith Porter Jr. is no longer with us.
Rest in Power Keith.
On New Year’s Eve, in Northridge, Los Angeles, Keith was seeing in the new year with family and friends in his neighbourhood. Tradition was to fire a gun into the air in celebration.
An off duty ICE agent, heard the shots, and inserted himself into the situation. A situation he shouldn’t have been in as an ICE agent is supposedly trained in compliance, transportation, custody paperwork. Immigration.
ICE is not designed or trained in community engagement responses. community law enforcement.
It is argued that after a short verbal exchange, the ICE agent shot and killed Keith.
Official reports from federal agencies say the ICE agent was responding to an ‘active shooter situation’. The department of homeland security says Porter fired at the agent before he was killed (in cold blood).
Watch how they change the narrative. Remember Keith Porter Jr. the man laughing with his family, caring and empathetic will become the monster who deserves to be dead.
Family and community advocates dispute this claim, stating that there is no independent released video evidence showing Keith Porter Jr. posed an imminent threat or fired at the agent.
Rather than lethal force, this off duty ICE agent should have done his citizen’s duty and called local Police as this was not an immigration issue. This was not his jurisdiction, his authority.
Keith Porter Jr. became an imminent threat only when this ICE agent turned up.
ICE has no community engagement training. They might have authority but not in the community, they don’t have the judgement and empathy to be on the streets. But obviously this ICE agent, off duty, thought otherwise.
Nearly two weeks ago Keith Porter Jr. was shot and killed. And people, the average person, even those online are just starting to find out about this murder. Only after Renee Good’s cold bloodied murder.
There is selective outrage in America. As I wrote last week, I have no issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be respond in this situation.
But
#SayHisName
Keith Porter Jr.
His family had been struggling to get his story, his unlawful killing into the current media cycle. This just compounds what I’ve been saying about the lack of visibility in mainstream media of black people being unlawfully killed by law enforcement.
Be honest have you heard of Keith Porter Jr? But you’ve heard of Renee Good?
There are arguments we can put in place here . You might not have heard his name, Keith Porter Jr. because he was killed by an off duty ICE agent not on duty with a large crowd there. Might be because there’s little video evidence circulating around. But the main reason is because Keith Porter Jr. was a black man.
This is part of the reason for not using #SayHerName for Renee Good.
No one’s even heard of Keith Porter Jr. No national attention for his murder but within 24 hours everybody knew Renee Good’s name.
This is the very reason #SayHerName was created for the invisible black women and black men who are causalities of the state, of state terror.
And it’s only now that white people are waking up to this terror when black people have been enduring if for centuries. This is why I argue to consider the language used and to give credit and recognition for where it originated, why it was created in the first place.
And yet the same stories are being used to justify the unlawful killings of Renee Good and Keith Porter Jr. They were both pointing weapons at ICE agents, posed a threat and had to be eliminated.
I say
2 different people
2 different cities
but the same structural problem.
Later down the line this might get read as the one bad apple or one bad moment. But this is clearly a system which once hidden no longer neededs to remain hidden.
A system that is built without limits or accountability.
De facto special powers bestowed by the Trump administration on ICE that seem to supersede police powers. ICE is now inserting itself into everyday life and every day neighbourhoods. And as we are witnessing this very presence is killing people. Killing more and more people who weren’t even their targets.
But that no longer seems to matter.
As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I don’t have an issue with the response to Renee Good – that’s how we should be responding in a situation like this. I just argue that the others, and there’s a long list that is growing of people who have been killed by ICE during this administration, deserve the same energy that is surrounding the murder of Renee Good.
As last time I checked, these are not animals, criminals or just talking points but human beings. Real human beings with grieving families. And this is something that gets forgotten in the media.
We need to continue to have these conversations and we need to keep fighting, on the small and large scale, against fascism near and far.
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.
i’ve been spending the last week or so really diving deep into what my word for 2026 will be.
2025 was all about fugitivity, dreaming and conjuring. And this will continue into 2026. But i need some direction. Something that will encompass my purpose with room enough to expand and explore.
i learnt a few lessons in 2025 in adopting a persona/ a mask in order to protect myself / to create some safe space for myself so ‘ i may not see myself as others see me.’ Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
i’m fixing to create ( or is it continuing to create?) new narratives around blackness in order to expunge the past dominant narratives we’ve been fed around blackness up until NOW.
i think i’ve found my word for 2026 – AFROSURREAL.
I was gifted a voucher for a ClassBento creativity class last Christmas. And I’m just getting around to using it today as I attended a photography class with Daniel Dabrowski.
I’ve wanted to experience the dark room and developing my own photography for decades. So I was super excited to finally fulfil this dream.
I used a ME Super Pentax 35mm camera. Daniel gave me some instructions around the camera – aperture, shutter speeds, the light and composition.
And then I was let free to take images in the park. I was in The Meadows, Edinburgh. It was dry but grey. But I loved the opportunity, the freedom to roam and snap.
The light is everything.
Once I got 36 images it was back to get the film out of the camera off the spool and developed.
I learnt so many new things that I’ll probably forget but I did learn to do it all in the dark. Feeding the film into a reel to be placed a canister so is light protected. Then adding the chemical to the special quantities needed for the film. Shaking gently for certain times and letting it stand. Hanging up the film reel to dry. Yes. There are images captured on the film. No duds. We have something to work with. Relief.
So many steps in the process of developing your own film and you can get into a focused rhythm, a meditative magic. It’s such a beautiful dance. Another experience where I felt as if I’d stepped out of time.
All that mattered was what was right in front of me. Witnessing the images appear. Shadows, ghost, haunting upon the papers.
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.
This week saw me on my travels again as I visited Liverpool. I was there to see Of Monsters and Men, and the release of their new album, All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade at Jacaranda Baltic. Which was awesome. Intimate and heartfelt.
Before I met up for lunch with my son, I took a walk around Albert Dock and came across the sea barriers full of love locks. Apparently for years, people have come for miles to attach their own lock as a message of unbreakable love. There are some people that think this is an eyesore and that they are damaging the barriers. I say, WTF.
What does it really matter if people want to add to the tradition? What really is the problem? They’re metal barriers there for people’s safety why not add some locks to them as a symbol of love? They don’t weaken the barrier. Probably make them stronger.
Isn’t love supposed to make us stronger? Yes there’s pain and suffering, but a whole heap of joy that comes with it. I’m learning about love at the moment as I read All About Love, by bell hooks, in collaboration with a friend. We read and talk about it. And I’m finding this most useful in developing a new understanding of love. And I suppose I come from the perspiration that I talk about love as the foundation of all that I do/ {BE}. But how can I say this if I don’t really know what love is? Talk is cheap but true understanding and embodiment of love is another story.
Living Wild Studios 