The shoot at Wells over, I now have the task of working out how best to use the footage. My embryonic editing skills are being severely tested but with the help of a technician at UoS I’m getting there. The shot here encapsulates the day for me. Walking across the empty intertidal sandbanks towards an endless blue sky.
I didn’t fully understand why I chose to wear this dress over my swimsuit, but on reflection I think it was prompted by learning about the Haptic a few years ago. That dress held some important memories of walking along beaches in Australia and the Cook Islands back in the 90’s. It was a pivotal time in my life (I was surprised and delighted it still fits!) I’m not a natural hoarder but for some reason I’d kept the dress…..now I know why. It was perfect both emotionally and artistically. Wearing it catapulted me back in time and I felt the euphoria of freedom from my former life all over again as I sank into the water and floated free from the land and events which had made me so sad in a distant part of my life.
The next picture is one of a series of stills taken from the video. I didn’t know how to do this until my tutor Emily Richardson showed me. The stills will be catalysts for abstract paintings which chime with much of my work on movement. The behaviour of the fabric underwater is beautiful and even the colour resonates with something deep inside me. I shall enjoy making a series of oil-paintings using these as a starting-point. I have a vague plan to display them next to a video loop of the underwater footage I shot with my new toy – a GoPro camera which I’m sure will become addictive – great fun to use.
Final preparations are in full swing for the MA assessment and exhibition and it’s becoming totally manic. So much to do and we all feel that suddenly, what I thought, might never happen, things are becoming clearer; links are forming and it’s exciting. I’d like at least another 6 months to achieve the ideas in my head. It’s inevitably the way. Pressure really focuses your ambition.
