My Current Artwork

I realised over the weekend of 4th & 5th February 2017, that the work I had started to produce was telling a story of my own life journey. I had begun by making marks in pen and ink, with acrylic paint and with a wide variety of tools, e.g. feathers, sponges, teasels, brillo pads, sticks and hand made brushes.

I began playing with line and grids; I was working in black, white, red and blue. It came to me that these lines and grids represented roads and pathways, pavements and walkways, rivers, canals and streams and hills and dales. My journey — my pathways and pavements, my rivers, streams, hills and dales — my journey, my ups and downs, twists and turns, corners, T-junctions and cul-de-sacs.

I made a visit to The Lowry Gallery in Manchester and enjoyed a touring exhibition, Perpetual Movement, curated in collaboration with Ballet Rambert, Britain's National Dance Company, as it celebrates 90 groundbreaking years.

I was struck, firstly, by the term Perpetual Movement; it resonated hugely with me. As I walked the exhibition it occurred to me we are surrounded by perpetual movement in everything we do; I have been surrounded by perpetual movement all my life — childhood, family, school, university, work, marriage, divorce, abuse, trauma, childbirth, illness, operations, travel and the perpetual drama and challenges that go in tandem with this.

Perpetual movement in my life has been huge.

While enjoying the Ballet Rambert Perpetual Movement Exhibition I studied some creative and artistic music scores; music moves and dances, we move to music, we dance. The lines and grids I was producing reminded me of scores on a music sheet which I felt complimented the perpetual movement of my life journey. I began to put the two pieces of work together — my life journey - overwritten with music notes. My grids became my own piece of music composed in The Lowry.

Music can inspire memories, so overwriting or combining the grids and lines with random music notes became the music score that has made some of my memories, positive and negative.

Perpetual Movement composed 8th February 2017.