No particular purpose or agenda

In March last year (2023) I finished my MA in Arts & Ecology at Dartington Arts School. It was an amazing experience. We delved into the role of the arts, and the artist, in the current environmental crises we face in the world. I made work about approaches to managing coastal erosion; nature/culture dualism, capitalism and value hierarchies; and interspecies collaboration. I thought a lot about interconnection, polarisation, and complexity. Big, juicy topics. 

Since finishing the MA, I’ve been trying to ‘make it’ as a freelance artist. To run thoughtful, meaningful courses and workshops, and make thoughtful, meaningful work, about thought-provoking, meaningful topics. And somewhere along the way, I’ve lost it. My creative mojo. My joy in making. Because it all feels so serious now. If my art’s not going to change the world (and in the process, make me a living), what’s the point?

The point is - everything. I am an artist. I can’t not make art. I also can’t make art if the stakes are constantly this high - I freeze, like the proverbial deer in the headlights - unable to move, unable to start anything, seemingly unable to have a single creative thought. 

So what’s the answer?

Play.

I know this, deep down, but I so often lose it, this precious thread that connects me back to my creativity, and, so importantly, my joy in creativity. It can’t be forced. If I tell myself ‘I’m having a play day today’, inevitably it doesn’t happen, it feels like another thing on the to-do list (‘do accounts, send invoices, play…’) It comes about best in a stealth-like manner, when I least expect it. A chance encounter with a photographer’s website, an investigation of a new app, an ‘I’ll just try it out quickly’, a swift play with another app… and before I know it, I’m playing, and creating, and the creations are often rather lovely, but - and here’s the thing - they don’t mean anything. 

At least, not right now. In weeks, or months’ time, when I’ve carried on down this rabbit hole of curiosity a bit further, and intrigue has led to research, has led to more making, has led to multiple more threads of intrigue and so on and so on, it might start to make sense. But in order for this to happen it has to be given space, to be understood as nothing but a curious non-sensical wonder for a while. And maybe it will always be. And maybe that’s ok, because it will inevitably lead to something else and something else and so on and so on. But if I try and make it make sense to start with, I’ll smother it, and the little spark of whatever-it-might-become will be extinguished.

So, that’s why I’ve re-started this blog. To give me motivation to keep making and sharing my play as well as my work, the stuff that I just make out of curiosity and for joy, the stuff that doesn’t make it to my portfolio, or maybe even to Instagram. The stuff that has no particular purpose or agenda.

No particular purpose or agenda - other than without it, I am lost. 

New Terrain

Photography, mainly. That’s been my strapline for as long as I can remember. Here on my website, my business cards, my social media bios. My practice as an artist has always centred on photography. My work has occasionally edged into other media such as printmaking and drawing, but it always circles back round to photography again. It’s what I do. My thing. But recently, I’ve started tentatively adding ‘and video/moving image artist’ to my well-worn self-description as a photographer. I’m feeling a pull away from my familiar, comfortable, well-loved terrain of the static photograph, into something more fluid, more nebulous, and more unknown… And as I’ve begun dipping a toe into moving image art, I’ve begun to realise how much there is to learn, how much potential moving image has as an art form, and how much there is to be discovered. And that excites me, a lot.

My photography practice has historically centred on a re-imagining of the everyday, seeking to move beyond habitual ways of seeing the world around us. A move away from (to quote Dr Amy Cutler in her article Square Eyes, Square Landscapes in MIA Journal May 2020) “those received ideas… we seem to sleepwalk through” and towards something approximating direct perception, uncluttered by labels and conditioned preferences. I’m fascinated by this as a possibility - that we could potentially rest in the gap between seeing and knowing and just be with our direct experience of imagery - and what impact this could potentially have on the rest of our lives. Could a creative practice of tuning into this gap between seeing and knowing have a ripple effect into other aspects of our lives - could we learn to be more present, mindful and accepting of what is, rather than instantly grasping or pushing away our experiences based on habitual responses…? I don’t know the answer, but it’s a constant and thought-provoking source of inspiration in my work. 

My interest in moving image began in the autumn/winter of 2020. I’d recently begun a year-long Postgraduate Programme in Creative Practice at independent art school Artpocket, and at a time of seemingly interminable lockdowns and social restrictions, I found myself working remotely on a collaborative project with the rest of the course cohort. A collaborative film was suggested, and we pooled our ideas along with mobile phone video clips, stop-motion videos, animations, photographs and music, and after many hours of concentrated editing via Zoom screenshare, we found we had created something unexpectedly profound. Exploring loss, memory, letting go and our hopes and intentions for the future, the film was meaningful to all of us in ways I don’t think any of us had expected - and evoked feelings and atmosphere in a way that I don’t think would have been possible through static imagery alone.

Fast forward a month or two, and as we entered the third national lockdown and the depths of winter, I found myself increasingly drawn to a small patch of woodland in my local area as a focus for my art practice. Partly due to its proximity (a five minute walk from my house made it a natural location for those ‘stay local’ lockdown walks). And partly, because it was about to change irrevocably. This tiny, scrubby patch of woodland with its narrow, muddy desire path which cut a corner off a well-established cycle track, was about to be temporarily off-limits due to tree-felling and development, including the creation of a two metre wide tarmac path which would make the cycle route more direct. To me, at that time, this felt like a huge loss. This small and seemingly insignificant patch of trees had become something of a refuge to me during those difficult locked-down months. With it’s narrow, muddy, sometimes flooded path, trip-hazard tree roots snaking underfoot and ivy trailing from tree branches that met overhead, it was the last oasis of relatively undisturbed nature before my route took me back to the busy road that led towards home - and it was the part of my daily walks that I most looked forward to.

So I began to document it. Through photographs, drawings, videos and sound recordings, I began to build up a record of the area before; during (by walking the perimeter fence); and after the development work was completed. Over a period of months this small local patch of land grew into something of a symbol to me - a microcosm of the way the human/nature relationship often plays out in the wider world, where nature is often seen as ‘other’ and separate, something to be tamed, controlled or dominated. It was also reflective of our increasing separation from nature in a world dominated by screens - nature viewed through pixels. Following a group crit where many people described the ‘push and pull’ and ‘tug of war’ between humans and nature they saw in my work, and using words such as ‘winning’, ‘losing’ and ‘battle’, I started thinking more deeply about the way we view and describe nature - that separateness, the nature/culture dualism that is so prevalent in our society. And how unhelpful this is in terms of our attitude to nature and the environment - we can say we’re ‘on the side of nature’ - but if we’re constantly conditioned to see ourselves as separate from nature, and therefore nature winning means us losing - can we ever really, truly want what’s best for the planet as a whole?

The work that came out of this project, titled ‘Dis/connection’, seeks to explore the complex interplay between humans and nature. I’ve become increasingly interested in the role art may have to play in breaking down the perceived separateness and deconstructing the dominant narrative of nature/culture dualism - and what impact this might have on our collective response to nature and the environment.

While I haven’t widely shared them, the moving image sequences I created were some of the most powerful pieces of work to come out of this project. While I was moving into the realms of the philosophical and ecological in my research and thinking, the numerous short films I was making helped to keep me connected to the personal within the project - where it all began with my sadness at the loss of this little patch of land as I knew it - and allowed me to process my feelings, while also considering a bigger picture. 

Film still from ‘Dis/connection’ project.

Film still from ‘Dis/connection’ project.

It was through this project that the idea of reimagining landscape started to emerge. While my work had historically focussed on reframing the everyday, and the personal impact this might have, I now found myself concerned with a broader framework, both in terms of content - the landscape - and concept - the potential impact on our response to the big environmental issues of our time. 

My most recent moving image work has started to delve deeper into the idea of challenging our habitual ways of seeing landscape. Through layering and abstraction of landscapes that are very familiar to me, I’m trying to re-learn how I see them, and how I experience them. As Amy Cutler says in Square Eyes, Square Landscapes, “the telling of stories of landscape requires all of our learning practices. So does the undoing of these stories.” This is what I am trying to do with my current, as yet untitled work. Undoing the stories of the Norfolk landscape that I have long felt somewhat ambivalent about, that have become so familiar during my life here that I don’t just take them for granted, I often don’t really even see them. 

And a re-framing is occurring. This is in part through the intentionality of creating films. More often that not now, I find myself really looking at a landscape that I might once have just ‘sleepwalked’ through. Noticing the moving, intertwining, ever changing details. The constantly shifting interplay between that which we think of as ‘nature’ and that which we label ‘manmade’. The wide open expanses contrasting with the tiniest of close-up details. And really listening to the sounds - the birds, the voices, the wind in the trees, the lapping of water, the unidentifiable creaks and thuds and murmurs of the world. And in part it’s through taking the raw material that I gather, and interweaving it, layering it, combining it to create a new version of what is so familiar. And I wonder what the wider impact of this might be. As Robert Macfarlane says in Speaking the Anthropocene (Emergence Magazine, May 2019), “landscapes that are generically apprehended and generically described are more vulnerable to misuse.” As a writer, Macfarlane is referring to written and verbal descriptions - but could the same be true of visual descriptions? Could the visual and auditory reframing of familiar landscapes jolt people out of their habitual indifference to a space, and start to “restore the eerie… where our narratives and ways of knowing fail; where the legibility of the environment accepts a gap or pause” (Amy Cutler, Square Eyes, Square Landscapes)? And could this gap or pause - this space between seeing and knowing I started exploring so many years ago through everyday objects - allow us the opportunity to experience these landscapes in a new way, and perhaps appreciate them, care about them, want to look after them in ways we haven’t before? Once again, my work raises more questions than it answers. And with so much still to learn, that feels exactly the way it should be.

For more of my moving image work, including experimental short films, snippets and works-in-progress, please visit my Vimeo page.

On awe and wonder

I’ve always been more comfortable writing about my work than talking about it. As an introvert, there’s something comforting and safe about being able to hone written words to say exactly what I want to say (or as close as I can come within the limits of my vocabulary). This is something I can do quietly, alone, and the messy first drafts (and second, third and fourth drafts) can be hidden away from public view. When I present my words to the world they are polished, and if not perfect, at least moulded and crafted and in some kind of order that I’m content with. 

When my good friend and creative collaborator Naomi Woddis invited me for an interview for her podcast The Two of Us, along with the excitement and pleasure at having been asked, I felt a certain amount of trepidation. The Two of Us is a brilliant podcast exploring connections between art, mental health and wellbeing, and along with my imposter syndrome kicking in (standard), I also wondered whether I’d be able to articulate myself through my voice rather than through the written word. Could I explain my work, would what I say make any sense? I usually take a long time to mull things over and come to a conclusion, would I be able to answer questions on the spot?

I’ll leave you to decide how successful I was at this! (you can listen to the podcast here, or on whatever platform you usually listen to podcasts). And while it took me way out of my comfort zone - and with hindsight there were definitely questions I might have answered differently, more articulately, more clearly - what I’ve taken away from the experience is something I’m treasuring. Like really good conversations do, it’s got me really thinking. This is very much down to Naomi’s skill as an interviewer - each question felt like a whole world to explore, and many of them are still percolating and resonating. And interestingly, it’s the questions that I didn’t immediately know the answer to, that I feel like I fumbled my way through and put myself through the wringer about afterwards, that have provided the richest food for thought. So I thought I would return to my old friend, the written word, to explore some of the thoughts and ideas in more depth. And maybe I’ll let myself off the hook regarding the polishing, and let the rambling, questioning, unfinished thoughts take up the space I often struggle to allow them.

At the end of last year I read a brilliant book called ‘Losing Eden: Why our Minds Need the Wild’ by Lucy Jones. The book explores the connections between nature and wellbeing (something I feel I have always innately, but perhaps unconsciously, known), and one aspect that really spoke to me was the importance of awe for our wellbeing. Scientists have found that the experience of awe has numerous positive effects, among them increasing happiness and lowering stress. In her explorations of awe, Lucy muses “Awe-inspiring experiences of nature, such as visiting the Grand Canyon or white water rafting [are] not available for the majority of the human population… Is awe a luxury today?”

One of Naomi’s questions from the podcast was how I experience an inner sense of wildness. What wildness means to me in my interior landscape, rather than the exterior. My answer was around authenticity - tuning in to how I’m feeling and honouring that. Some days that might look classically ‘wild’, and I might want to throw paint around or swim in the river or run barefoot on the beach with the wind in my hair. And other days it might be a much quieter, subtler, more introverted kind of wild, which sees me reaching for a notebook, or, often, my camera, and spending time alone, quiet, thinking, reflecting and noticing. 

Sometimes my inner wild sees me (and my similarly nature-loving partner) getting up in the small hours of a cold October morning, and leaving the house at 6am to drive an hour and a half through the drizzly dark to a coastal nature reserve in the hope, but no certainty, of seeing something magical, and arriving, and walking, and sitting, and waiting. And waiting. Eyes glued to the glimmers of movement in the gradual lightening of the grey late-autumn dawn. A ripple, a flurry… stillness. Hushed breaths and murmurs. And then… a rush of sound such as I’ve never heard, and a soaring, a swooping, a mass of thousands upon thousands of birds moving as one, shape-shifting and swirling and taking my breath and squeezing my heart and filling my eyes with tears at the sheer wonder of it. The sheer awe. Almost not wanting to lift my camera, not wanting anything to create a barrier between me and this moment of pure magic.

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Above - murmuration of thousands upon thousands of knots at Snettisham RSPB reserve.

Above - murmuration of thousands upon thousands of knots at Snettisham RSPB reserve.

And other times I wake early on a spring morning. The sun is just rising, the light is all golden rays and morning mist. I grab my camera and leave quietly, trudging the familiar paths until I enter the scrubby meadow that I walk or run across almost daily. I am greeted by a bejewelled world. Spiders’ webs delicately weave between the heads of cow parsley and tall grasses, fill the spaces between twigs on the budding hawthorn. Each one a shimmering, sparkling necklace of diamond dew-drops, glittering in the low beams of the morning sun. An oh-so familiar scene, utterly transformed for the briefest, most precious of moments.

These two very different experiences both speak to the wild within as well as the wild without. The need for adventures and new experiences, and the gentle, quiet moments of wonder that can be found on the doorstep. Both fulfil a deep need in me, and fuel my creative practice.  

In Losing Eden, Lucy Jones sums up her section on awe by saying… “Really, awe is Earth’s signature… What a wild and mind-bending disco there is on the Earth, if we would only look and take notice!”

In recent times, I have never been more grateful to have access to the small, quiet, unassuming pockets of wild. And to have the tools to look and take notice, to see the wonder, and feel the awe.

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Above - the awe and wonder of spiders’ webs in the morning sun.

Above - the awe and wonder of spiders’ webs in the morning sun.

On practising what I preach/new courses coming up

Back in December I was incredibly busy. Work deadlines, running courses and finishing a collaborative project for my Postgraduate Programme in Creative Practice all collided at roughly the same time. I had a beautiful bunch of flowers on my working-from-home desk (aka the kitchen table), and for about two weeks I had the same thought on a daily basis - I really must take some photos of those flowers… and then I’d get pulled back into the the busy-ness, and the thought would go out of my head for another day.

One morning, after a particularly long day at the computer, I decided to take myself for a walk, and on returning, noticed how beautiful the light was, and that my bunch of flowers was just starting to fade around the edges. Now was the time. I grabbed my camera, and, finally, allowed myself to become totally absorbed in the colours, textures and light. I can only have spent 5, maybe 10 minutes at the most. And yet when I sat down at my computer to start the day’s work, I felt so much calmer. Lighter. Happier. Taking those few minutes for me, for a complete break to do something creative just for the sheer joy of it, had an impact that lasted right through the day. In my 5 minute breaks that day, rather than grabbing my phone to scroll through social media feeds, I picked up my camera instead, and took a few more photos as the light gradually changed throughout the day. It was the calmest day I could remember having for weeks. A really good reminder to practice what I preach, and that no matter how busy life is, taking a few minutes to notice, and really pay attention to the beauty around me, is always worth it.

If you’d like to learn to tune in to the beauty in your everyday surroundings (no matter how fed up with them you may be after x months of lockdown), join me for my next Magic in the Mundane course with Artpocket. A 6-week, online course starting 22nd February 2021, we’ll use simple, accessible photography exercises to connect with and appreciate the everyday world around us, coming into the present moment and noticing the beauty in things you may normally overlook or take for granted.

Following on from Magic in the Mundane, I’ll be running Finding Your Focus, starting 12th April - a 6-week online course which will give you the opportunity to delve deeper and explore different genres of photography, discover more about different types of photography that excite you and develop your own individual style.  Each week we will look at a different genre, discuss selected examples and explore it through our own lens.

Both courses can be done with a smartphone or simple digital camera, no technical equipment or knowledge is needed - just an open mind and a sense of curiosity!

You can sign up via the Artpocket website. In the meantime, here are some moments of beauty from my kitchen table…

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Lockdown Residency - exhibition and artist talk

Back in March, when the first lockdown kicked in, I found myself slightly at a loss creatively. I’d been making work about ordinary, normal, everyday things - the real mundane stuff of life, that people don’t usually make art about. But suddenly, nothing seemed ordinary or normal any more.

I was very fortunate to be taking part in the year-long Introduction to Arts & Wellbeing course run by the brilliant Artpocket, and while we couldn’t meet in the studio in person, our weekly online meetings really helped me keep my creative practice at the forefront of my mind. I started making work about what everyday life felt like now, exploring my perceptions of time during this strangest of periods.

In April I discovered the Lockdown Residency through a friend on Instagram - an opportunity for artists all over the world to take part in a geographically distant but collective residency, making work in response to lockdown. I got in touch, and was welcomed to take part. Combined with the Artpocket Arts & Wellbeing course, the Lockdown Residency kept my creative practice at the forefront of my mind. The ethos of both the course and the residency provided an un-pressured, open-ended focus that, I am coming to realise, really allows my creativity to thrive. An invitation to experiment, try new ideas, and learn and reflect through the process of making.

It’s probably no surprise that my work started to change during this time. My photography work became more experimental, and I started heavily editing photographs and creating images from many layers - drawn to a sense of play and freedom that was perhaps lacking in ‘real life’. As lockdown began to ease, I started gradually edging further afield for walks, and found experiences that once would have seemed very ordinary to me, like a walk on the beach, had become exceptional and special, and I was becoming more aware of the preciousness of the natural world I had once taken so much for granted.

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My work gradually took on a more imaginative quality; while I was still largely focussing on tiny details, I found the emerging work to have a more landscape-like quality, evoking landscapes and seascapes that are quite dreamlike. The power of imagination really started coming to the fore, with my longing for nature, wide open spaces and the sea coming to life through my images. And while the images are recognisable as landscapes or seascapes, there is also something slightly uncanny or surreal about them. To me, this reflected the feeling of emergence into the 'new normal' in the summer of 2020 - feeling things were kind of, almost returning to normal - and yet, there were those constant reminders that it wasn't, not quite.

I really feel this period of time marked a change in direction for me as an artist. The power of imagination, and the preciousness of the natural world were both strong areas of reflection and influences on my work during lockdown in spring-summer this year. This has resonated beyond that time and, I feel, will continue to do so. Creating imagined scenes through layering images is something I am now quite fascinated with, and continuing to explore. Themes of nature connection feel much stronger in my work now, and recent work-in-progress (which I've yet to share widely) is exploring environmental issues which is a new direction for me. It feels exciting and inspiring and I look forward to sharing more of this work soon.

I’m delighted to be taking part in the Lockdown Residency online exhibition, featuring the varied and poignant artworks of 18 artists from all around the world. The exhibition will run until 30th November 2020.

I’m also going to be taking part in an artist talk on Saturday 14th November 2020, 6-8pm GMT. Artist Patricia Bidi will interview fellow artists about personal stories and experiences that emerged in their creative processes during the lockdown period from March to June 2020. Artists will include: Davy Yong, Neus Torres Tamarit, lead exhibition curator Lisa Pettibone, and myself. Hope to see you there!

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New courses starting November 2020

After the success of Magic in The Mundane, the online photography course I ran in June/July this year, I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been invited back to run not one, but two online photography courses with Artpocket, starting in November.

Starting on Monday 2nd November (18:30-19:30) I’ll be running Magic in the Mundane again, a 6-week online course designed to help you tune in to the beauty that can be found anywhere and everywhere, if we just take the time to slow down, pause, and look. We’ll use simple and accessible photography exercises to connect with and appreciate the everyday world around you, coming into the present moment and noticing the beauty in things you may normally overlook or take for granted. 

Then the same week, starting on Wednesday 4th November (18:30-19:30) I’ll be launching Finding your Focus, a 6-week online course which will give you the opportunity to delve deeper and explore different genres of photography, discover more about different types of photography that excite you and develop your own individual style.  Each week we will look at a different genre, discuss selected examples and explore it through our own lens.

Both courses can be done with a smartphone or simple digital camera, no technical equipment or knowledge needed!

You can sign up via the Artpocket website. Hope to see you there!

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Magic in the Mundane - new course starting 29th June

I'm very excited to be running a brand new online photography course with Norwich-based independent art school Artpocket. I’ve been a long-time student of Artpocket (I’m currently studying on their Intro to Arts & Wellbeing course), I rate them and their teaching very highly, so I feel hugely honoured to have been invited to join the team of fantastic artists delivering courses.

Anyone who reads this blog, or knows me and my work, will know that I’m all about the little details. The beauty that can be found anywhere and everywhere, if we just take the time to slow down, pause, and look. I will be bringing this approach to the Magic in the Mundane course, using simple and accessible photography exercises (all of which can be done with a smartphone or simple digital camera) to connect with and appreciate the everyday world around you, coming into the present moment and noticing the beauty in things you may normally overlook or take for granted. 

The course starts Monday 29th June, and will run 18:30 to 19:30 BST for 6 weeks, you can book via the Artpocket website. This course has been developing in my mind slowly but surely for a long time, I'm very happy to finally be sharing it with the world! Please do share this with anyone you think might be interested.

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