Exploring the unknown
In her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost, Rebecca Solnit quotes from Plato’s Meno; who asks the question, “How will you go about finding that thing, the nature of which is totally unknown to you?”
Making art, like walking, is for me an exploration into the unknown. It can feel euphoric or fearful, is full of choice and accident, decision and procrastination but essentially discovery.
The work that I make is about the wonderful solitude of walking alone, mostly by the sea. The waves, both wild and calm, the sound, movement, immersion and peace. The encounters with seals while swimming, foxes and birds while walking. I find the solitude of walking alone changes the way I experience a place. I lose self-consciousness and conversely become both physically and mentally more aware exploring, climbing, sitting and watching. I sketch, photograph, collect, make and document. Who I am in relation to others and to my own mind, disappears into an immersive, timeless state of simply being.
Returning to the studio I make simple maps from memory, objects from those things that I have collected, make paintings and drawings. The work has its own trajectory, similar to walking. Sometimes I have to live with things for a while before it becomes obvious how I will use them. Other times I need to get started as soon as I return. I lose myself in my work in the same way as I did on my walks. I use salt water in my ink drawings as it captures a memory of the sea.
From collected driftwood and other materials, I make Objects of Solitude and Protection for women who, like me, walk alone in wild places. I have sold many of these and one is currently being carried by a woman around the Welsh Coast Path. I take photographs of myself as powerful, invincible and unassailable. I make traces of my footprints using ash on the sand and make really large Objects of Power and Protection.
I did a BA(Hons) Fine Art while bringing up my 3 daughters, taught Art and Design in Further Education for many years. When I retired I completed a MA Fine Art and have been exhibiting and selling work since, including work in The Trinity Buoy Drawing Prize, Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Galleries and The Royal Cambrian Academy in North Wales.
