Outside In

Art for me is a way of understanding.  A way of moving forwards in that internal space we both inhabit and create.  I work with poetry and visual art.  My work is both constrained and developed by the autoimmune disease with which I live.  When I physically cannot write or draw I form images and words in my mind, waiting sometimes for months for the time to let them free.

Poetry has been part of my life since 1 was 7 but like many people I lost touch with visual art at school.  It wasn’t until 2007, when I joined a group called Drawing Ahead, tutored by sculptor and artist Colin Riches, that I found the lost joy of creating visual art.  I was also introduced to many different materials and techniques and was drawn to the strange beauty of sculpture.  Drawing Ahead gave me the confidence to attend other visual art courses and a summer school.  I even completed part of an OCA course in sculpture.  Not finishing things in a traditional way, now comes with the territory but is almost irrelevant.  The journey is everything.

Emerging from a time without poetry and art is bittersweet.  Discovering the new limitations on body and mind merges with the joy of creating.  And the creation itself helps me accept new losses, and look for new possibilities.

The images show work completed in the past few years in different medium.  What the images cannot show is that amazing ‘in the moment’ time which created them and which for me is the transforming power and beauty of art.