I am spending April 2018 at Arteles Creative Centre on their ‘Comic Blast’ specialist residency program, alongside 10 artists working under the broad heading of comics and illustration. Arteles is based (in what used to be a school) in the rural Pirkanmaa region of Finland, about 30 miles west of Tampere. I’m going to make drawings on paper, documenting and responding to the natural environment and inhabitants I encounter. My interest is in the lives of those who still craft by hand or cultivate manually – their lives entwined with the land, living in relative isolation with numbers dwindling, desisting change and becoming custodians of tradition.
This residency will be my first, and is a significant moment to re-develop my artistic practice, having spent the bulk of my years since graduation working in commercial animation. This particular program grabbed me not only for the drawing / comics focus but very much for the rural setting. When I started to make drawings on paper again last year, it was a conscious move to create away from digital commercial work, observing from life and being present in a setting. Looking for subject matter I found myself pulled to rural environments and people engaged in manual tasks, in some kind of correlation with my use of analogue tools.
