The way I paint involves a ‘listening’ – a paying attention to the surface texture through touch and vision and being aware of my own reaction. Noticing what is thriving now in our immediate world – both plants and people and conversely what is missing for those individuals who are not at their best or wilting. This process is an honesty with myself, an awareness of what is really there, rather than what I want or am expecting.
I attempt to pay relaxed attention to a question in the movement element of my Lost library performances. Visitors to The Lost Library ask a question as part of the registration process. As the lost librarian, instead of answering their query by sourcing or guiding the individual to the information they are looking for I hold the question in my mind and move around the space as a conduit for my contemplation. It is a challenge to simply hold the question and not solve it, inevitably answers surface, unbidden, in my mind while I’m moving.
In this project I am reducing the information given by a librarian to very little; an echo of the reduction in the number of public libraries – services being squeezed, libraries closed and with less librarians available due to cuts. I don’t answer questions, guide or communicate clearly. What visitors receive is variable and inconsistent.
