So –What’s it all about?  Why am I passionately painting and making these natural – looking forms from clay? Cocoons of clay and jesomite which could reference nature and the land in some way. They are ephemeral, fragile and soft. Soft in that they have no hard edges or straight lines and for me this is how I feel and experience colour also. In my painting I feel the colour as soft also. The colours are never in their pure primary form but they are the diluted colours in between and beyond tertiary as they are barely there. The pigment is rich but diluted. There are no straight lines as I subconsciously blur and distort them if they accidentally appear.

I reflect on this year and being at home constantly and it reminds me of the past; I was in an unhealthy relationship for many years raising my family and slowly becoming a shell of who I used to be. Eight years ago my degree and my creativity literally rescued me and then just over a year ago I built my studio in the garden after working in a city centre space for six years. I felt that I was becoming insular again and my work less intuitive so started the MA to return to the conversations and contact which although challenging is my savoir. I love being at home although unfortunately this feeds my natural reclusive tendencies to avoid social and unfamiliar situations. At home I have everything in one place, compartmentalised and tidy except for my studio which is a total carnage of sticky smelly surfaces.

This got me thinking about home and being inside. Each room compartmentalised into sitting, sleeping, storing, cooking, eating and for me making. The fictional piece that I wrote for Laura’s session ‘Barn Park Road to Venn Way and 14 in between’ references this life experience and also is an analogy for my process of moving paint/clay around to make something which is comfortable and feels right for me aesthetically and physically.

Thinking about being insular and inside and in an effort to keep things simple yet open to change I am focusing on the idea of that which is internal. In part this is because my recent work gives an aesthetic nod to wound-like holes, and circular bound forms as do the more recent clay forms.

We emerge from the womb physically restricted, to a room, to a home, school, wider word ultimately returning to a physically restricted home, room, interned to the womb of the earth. The Latin term inter refers to being between, within, among, in the midst’s of, together and during…