Keeping centred, keeping grounded
LUSH
Blig Blousey Peonies
This is not a zoomed in image. These flowers have not been magnified. Enlarged through the lens.
I could not believe the size of these peonies’ heads. And not a one off. Multiple big, bouncy peonies alll in a row.
White, cream, blush, pink. A feast for my eyes and nose. Getting in my steps for the day, my senses have been heightened. I’m becoming aware of summer really coming into her own.
Big bursting peonies blooms.
Are these a special variety of the flower or have they been artificially altered? Bigger, more, massive.
I’m gonna take my lead from these peonies and not dim my big bold, blousey attitude and {being} out of fear of being seen as too much. Too blod. Too in your face.
These peonies can pull it off, so why not me too, as we are kin.
The Plot of Our Repair
I had the pleasure of gathering with the WOC Azadi again in Sheffield today.
We gathered to share ideas around how to plot/plotting our healings, our liberation together.
Visual journaling was on hand to capture our thoughts, feelings, plans and plots.
It was such a nurturing and nourishing space in nature. It was a gathering of hope and aspirations.
It was an honour to be part of the day retreat. Ideas for The Plot of Our Repair came about from a reading is Saidiya Hartman’s essay , The Plot of her Undoing (2020).
The plot of her undoing begins with his dominion. It begins in the fifteenth century with a papal bull, with a philosopher at his desk, pen in hand, as he sorts the world into categories of genus and species. It begins with a bill of sale, with a story in the newspaper that enumerates her crimes, with a note appended to the file: she answers questions easily, but appears stupid; it begins with a wanted poster that reduces the history of her life to a single word-condemned.
And then towards the end of this essay there is a switch. A turn to explore how we can undoing the plot of her undoing. How we can move against the forces aiming to ruin/ control/ oppress the black/brown woman.
The undoing of the plot proceeds by stealth. It is almost never recognized as anything at all and certainly never as significant.
…
It begins with the earth under her feet. It begins with all of them gathered at the river and ready to strike, with all of them assembled in the squatter city, with all of them getting ready to be free in the clearing.
The undoing of the plot begins with her runaway tongue, with her outstretched hands, with songs shared across the unfree territory and the occupied lands, with the pledges of love that propel struggle, with the vision that this bitter earth may not be what it seems.
The undoing of the plot, the plot developing towards our repair was started before us. We stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We continue this journey, this plotting together. Today makes me feel that we have already won.
Taking the time to play
I’ve always loved drawing.
At different times of my life, I was either really into drawing or gone off the boil from drawing.
Basically, if I allowed my drawings to come into contact with other people, that’s when my drawing would go off the boil. I wouldn’t do it, I’d let the practice slide because someone or other had said my drawing wasn’t very/any good.
Or they’d looked at what I’d shared and start giving me pointers on how to improve it. How to shade ‘properly’ or how to get things into ‘proportion’. Basically saying that what I was doing, instinctively and true to me, was wrong.
For large stretches of time, I didn’t allow myself to draw, to play because in comparison to others, my work just didn’t match up. Didn’t look like theirs.
And then one time, while feeling less than, while feeling the odd one out, not accepted or appreciated, I picked up a pen and started drawing again. I found solace and safety in the lines I drew.
Faces, I love drawing faces. Usually of black women. Seeing myself reflected.
I completed a 100 days of black women one time, a few years ago now and I loved where this challenge took me. It took me to a place and peace of accepting my drawings. My style, my subjects and themes, my shading and perspectives.
Fuck man, we’re all individuals, unique and no way are we supposed to or should be drawing all alike, to a certain standard or brief.
My drawings are an expression of me, and how I see/ move through this world.
I’m dealing with it. I’m embracing it. And fuck everyone else!
This is my kind of blossom season
Sidekick
I’m about 116 days into my creative sketchbook practice. Started back in December 2025, my creative sketchbook practice is about turning up each day to the blank page, in an altered book, and getting creative. It’s about playing with my resources, stuff I’m been accumulating for years and always seem to have an excuse not to use. Not to start.
Well 116 days ago I started. I put paint to page without knowing what was going to happen. And over 100 days later, it’s the same feeling. Turn up to the page and dive into the unknown, allowing my intuition, my inner wisdom to guide my hand and heart towards what becomes. Towards what is created.
What I’m gotten into the habit of doing is when I used a brayer with paint on the page, I start by adding a drop or two of paint on a blank page of another sketchpad. A kid’s cheap wire bound sketch pad. I’ll roll out my brayer coating it in paint before I let it roll into my creative sketchbook.
And repeat with other colours, other rolls of paint in different directions. Each time, paint is added and subtracted from the kid’s sketchpad.
I’m calling this my sidekick. Think Robin to Batman. Think Watson to Holmes. An associate, a supporting role. A necessary comrade in the scheme of things. Without which the main action, or in this case creation would not occur.
Always a happenstance. Sometimes a masterpiece. This sidekick is full of surprises. And sometimes are much better to look at than the ‘so-called’ finished piece in the creative sketchbook.
Sometimes pages from the sidekick are torn and stuck into the main squeeze, the creative sketchbook, and are involved once more in the daily creative practice. Reusing, recycling, reviewing.
Each sketchbook, each piece, each stroke of paint feeds into the next from the last. I just love the process and what it throws up. This might be just another reason why I keep returning and keep diving into this creative sketchbook practice. Daily!
let this be the healing
after Danez Smith
let this be the healing
the out of time and space
to flow back to the source
of love & care
let this be the honey to the wounds
the joy within the unknown
the hope to survive
in the mouth of the dragon*
let this be the refusal
the movement underground
to protect our vulnerabilities
let this be the healing
*a line from Audre Lorde’s ‘ The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action’ in Your Silence Will Not Protect You.
Hello, did you miss me?
Hello again. It’s April first. And I’m back. And after taking March off from posting here, I’m come to realise that I need this space, this digital, open notebook. This open notebook acts as a catch all space as well as a release of the pressure valve. Knowing I can come here and share anything, let off steam, muse, not even make sense or have the answers is something I’ve been taking for granted. Time away has given me a rest but also a renewed perspective and appreciation for this space, this blog, this notebook, this website. I can hang out here and be completely myself. Spaces and places like this are few and far between.
What makes this space cool also is you. You come here and read all about it. You’re part of the process. And I appreciate your eyes and hearts. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you for being here. I’ll be honest with you though, from the get go, I didn’t get very far with the archives of this space. I’ve hardly touched the practice as I’ve been pulled elsewhere. But I’ll let you know what I’ve been up to by ad by. For now, I’m just marking my spot, putting down a marker that I have returned and with great joy.
I’ve got so many images to share with you as well as notes about my adventures and reading and thinking and dreaming. But all in good time. I don’t want to overload the senses straight away. Let’s just ease ourselves back into position. Take a look around and see if anything needs changing. I’ll be back daily during this month.
I’ve always loved April for creativity. Both my kids are April babies. The womb, my gut is the seat of your creativity, so let’s see what comes forth this April as I dive back into poetry reading and writing. I’m feeling the urge to write and I’ve got time on the horizon. I’m excited to see what occurs.
I hope you are sticking around to find out too.
Playful Palimpsests
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.
Living Wild Studios 