I am staring out into the garden at the roses both blooming and drooping in the rain. There is the quiet hum of the fridge in the background and the only other thing I can hear currently is the tapping of my fingers on my laptop keyboard. These are precious moments. The foliage outside is starting to get overgrown, making it a haven for the wildlife. My garden laziness has some benefits thankfully.
This feeling of a hiatus or a reprieve is welcomed. My visits to the studio have been short and sweet without much new work being developed. I am preparing for 2 Open Studio events. One of these is connected to the KAOS Open Studios event taking place in the wider Kingston borough where I will be exhibiting some of my work at the lovely Fusebox Gallery (situated by the riverside in Kingston). This starts the weekend of the 18th May and is on until the 26th May. I have been calmly and diligently sorting through works, painting sides of canvases, adding D-rings and cords; all necessary activities and really rather enjoyable quiet, methodical processes. Then from June 21st-23rd, I will be opening my studio In Hawks Road as part of the wider ASC Open studio event. I am hoping between now and then I can get started on some new work and complete a couple of larger works that I have started.
In the meantime for my display at Fusebox, I am using as the basis, the following piece of text from my Masters dissertation.
‘As I wander, there may be something left behind, a memory, a scuff mark or perhaps a ricochet reminiscent of the beat of my heart. The surfaces I touch, the footsteps I take, bear witness to those who were there before. There is a coming together of nature, the body and of an ‘other’; something outside of and beyond myself. Gestural acquaintances, carved out murmurs, sometimes blended, crossing over in patches and sometimes colliding, creating accidental displacements and disturbances.
Reflections are scattered throughout my day such as in mirrors, windows and in pools of water. Like traces, they are the absence of the real thing; a copy or a simulacrum, like the flickering shadows in Plato’s cave.
There is evidence of something absent and of something present. An altered presence to what was there before. A stain, a residue, the suggestion of something disappearing. The death of what was. Vestiges and spectres, ghostly apparitions that remind us of our own mortality.’
The falling rain outside echoes this overall sentiment.
