So I said I would be back to share with you my current visual journal. Coming into the mix at the end of May after a weeks of zero colour, my soul and creativity were craving colour and space. A large space.
So I went back to Flying Tiger and purchased the A3 sketchbook I failed to purchase a couple of weeks before. The paper inside is creamy and reminds me of sugar paper from primary school. It’s a rough and ready kind of texture, rustic and low maintenance. Not too high quality to raise the fear levels of making mistakes or not being quite so perfect.
I’m been enjoying preparing the pages with colour. Throughout my day, I have the journal laid out on the table in the corner of my bedroom and when I walk past, I choose 2, 3 or 4 colours from my collection of little bottles of acrylic paint and make generous dollops on the page.
Then I bring out my trusted old faithful, the disused bank card and smear that paint around. This calms my nerves, stills the worries and brings me joy. I love how the different combinations of paint play out together on the page. It’s a true collaboration.
I know this journal is far too big to be carrying around with me as I go about my business outside: sea swims, coffee meets, trip to London at the moment. But still I carry it with me, enjoying tucking it under my arm or carrying it pressed against my chest.
Sometimes, as happened today, stray streams of paint, still wet and sticky, collect within the seams and edges of the pages, transferring to my fingers, smearing on my coat and t-shirt. Today, it was bright turquoise and sandy brown that ended up on my hands and clothes by the time I reached the metro station to get to Newcastle Central Station. I really couldn’t be annoyed as it goes with the territory. You play with paint and you’re bound to make a mess.
But I don’t care because I feel and know in my heart and gut that I’m making a whole heap of mess within my visual journal because that’s how I make sense, make joy, make a way for me to navigate through this world on my own terms.
It was so good to have a deep dive into my practice, my work around fugitivity and refusing to perpetuate white supremacy culture. And it was all welcome at Feral Words. Nothing off limits and it was so liberating to try and make sense of all the concepts and ideas and feelings that are circulating within and without of me at the moment in time. A very disturbing time.
A while ago, I got the idea into my head to make junk journals to sell on Etsy. I got a variety of papers and cardboards and ephemera together to make them and enjoyed the process.
While decluttering last month, I found my stash of handmade junk journals. I’d sold none. I’m not even sure if I’d put them up for sell. Sometimes as a creative, you can have these ideas and instigate them only to fall short of the finish line. Something else might take your attention away, something more shiny or you could allow fear and doubt to step in and paralysis the process from moving any further.
I’m not sure what happened with these junk journals but I felt the urge to just use them on my return from Iceland.
I need something that’s self contained and discreet as I put myself back together after the time away. I felt free and unhurried and playful while away. Now back I have to slip back into responsibilities and worries and demands from others, and to be honest it’s a rough textured blanket against my skin at the moment.
I’m still remembering and wanting to be with the smooth soft caresses of Iceland. And dream into the landscape.
So maybe keeping the bar low. Just making sure I turn up to the page daily and working out the feelings and kinks is enough right now.
Almost like beginning again. Each new day is day one. No pressure and no comparisons just be. I feel attempting this in a clean journal, a clean slate is doable at the moment.
Hence cracking open my homemade junk journal and just allowing whatever needs to turn up, turn up.
I’m keeping my journals all in one place this year as I attempt to mark how many or how much I create and play and mark each day of 2025. And of course I missed my single week/day handmade journals that I’ve shared here and here. And of course I’ve moved onto another journal since my return from Paris. But this post is a marker.It’s a start in visually representing my visual journaling of 2025.
This weekend saw me away from home at The Outdoor Connections weekend. It’s a weekend away for grassroots groups who are working to diversify the outdoors. Groups and organisations who connect with grassroots communities to offer opportunities outdoors with nature.
So Earth Sea Love CIC, me as Creative Director, was invited along to take part. And I went with Kiwi, my converted campervan, with the hope of camping out on the site of the youth hostel where everything was taking place.
That didn’t go plan as sleeping in my campervan wasn’t allowed on site for what reason I do not know. So each evening, I left the group to try and find a park up for the night.
Stanage Edge, Park District
I’m not complaining though as I found some lush spots to park up and rest.
Now I have returned home, I’m still a bit out of sorts. Not quite landed yet after my time away. So a way for me to get grounded is to make another handmade journal to use for my daily pages moving forward.
Well no sooner than I’d finished it, yesterday evening, that it’s full today. All I can say is that I must have had a lot to process. I know I did use it as my next to-do list after my last journal was used for the same practice. And it’s just helps me get things straight. Clear the decks and start again. Begin to work my way through the things that need to be done.
For those of us who live at the shoreline… Audre Lorde
It will be 10 years this August that I started my visual journaling practice.
Then it was called Dreaming on Paper, as I completed the course of the same name by Lisa Sonora.
I needed a safe space to explore the tumult of my feelings and thoughts. I was going through a traumatic experience of escape really. Escape from the life I’d spent the past 12 years building up, that was took away in the flick of a Facebook post.
I ran away from the public, the writing community, my home as I travelled into the Scottish Highlands and Islands. To heal.
Visual journaling helped me heal. Helps me continue to heal.
Overtime, I’ve come to understand my visual journal practice as a fugitive practice. Within these paints, images and words, dreams of freedom are planned out and eventually come to fruition. Projects, happenings, events – all on my own terms.
I mean, the whole point about escape is that it’s an activity. It’s not an achievement. You don’t ever get escaped. – Fred Moten
Within these visual journal spreads, I work out how to escape, how to get outside white supremacy culture while still having to be living on the inside. Coming to terms with the thought of that the outside can only occur from the inside. Being here.
Visual journaling is me trying to create an opening, a break in the fabric in which to slip on through into the otherside/ outside, into the woods running between the trees with the dogs barking at my feet. Creating beauty, creating a beautiful space in which to linger in while the terror rages around me.
Visual journaling is a safe space, is a nurturing space, is a free space.
Living Wild Studios 