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Finding time and new work

This week’s been tough. There have been plenty of distractions from painting. My son is teething and has just entered the 4 month sleep regression. Our washing machine and oven both died within days. Life pressed against my patience, and cut off all and any opportunity to be creative.

But then something else happened. I saw my pin officially on the Global map of ARIM artists and that made me feel magic. And, I joined a group called Milan Art and signed up for an online course to improve my acrylic techniques and just like that, I was reinvigorated and have just managed to paint a picture whilst my boy had a nap.

‘Daydreaming while my son sleeps (instead of doing the washing up)’, was a lovely experiment in colour. I’m really enjoying painting with a limited palette and meditating on blue, pink and yellow with accents of black, white and gold. I actually started off with the background as an abstract piece, before deciding that it needed something else, and just like that, a daydreaming mother appeared amongst the colour.

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A list of ideas while my son is sleeping on me

Newly inspired by the ARIM residency, lots of ideas are popping into my head. They seem to have a habit of appearing when my hands are full and disappearing before I can scribble anything down.

My son has just fallen asleep on me. And as much as I could just sit, blissfully listening to his gentle breathing, now is a good time to note down some of these ideas, the ones I can remember, anyway. I’ll add any more as they come to mind. Thank goodness I can update my blog from my phone, it’s a very handy tool to have.

Abstract, set of 3, various themes to explore around love, grief, motherhood, missing my mum, creation, loss

Abstract to song, ‘You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me’ – for mum. Listen to the song while painting.

Abstract to song, ‘Daddy Cool’ – for dad. Listen to the song while painting.

Abstract – the cycle. Mum, me, Rufus.

Abstract – life and death.

Abstract – my new identity as a mother.

Portrait of Rufus, acrylic, or water colour.

Pop Art portrait of Rufus smiling

Portrait of a tumbledryer (complete with halo as it both sends my son to sleep and has improved the laundry situation immeasurably).

Portrait of calpol with halo.

Painting – A broken can phone line with ru and me at one end, and the line going into nothing…where mum should be at the other end.

Painting – a child’s wooden picture set. The blocks of nana and Grandad are missing.

Painting – dirty bottles of milk awaiting washing

Painting – bath time. Lots of bubbles

Art made from my sons feet. Paint impressions, bot his actual feet.

Something to do with endless laundry.

Something to show late nights, holding a sleeping baby. It’s in those silences, I miss mum the most.

Something to show me singing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ to Rufus, like mum used to sing it to me.

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ARIM – Journal Entry

Things have gotten off to a positive start. Feeling like I’m a part of something has given me the motivation I need to get started and I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the results. Not just the painting itself, but how the process has made me feel. I am inspired, and reconnected to my source.

My first painting came naturally. I am full of ideas for more. I’ve decided to carry on and make a series of the faceless creator idea. It will give me an opportunity to develop those techniques. I’ve already sketched out the next in the series. I’m looking to get some prints made to sell. I want to get them printed myself, package and sell them to buyers myself. There are companies that can handle this for you, but I want to give a personal touch to anything sold, to be confident in the quality and buyer experience.

I’ve received positive feedback, which has strengthened my resolve and I’m really excited for what the future holds. I’ve set up a subscribe button on my page for anyone wanting to buy art, and once I have work to sell I will notify my audience. If you’re interested, you can sign up at the bottom of the homepage.

I’m thinking about how to incorporate everything art into daily life with my son. I’m planning trips to galleries, painting sessions, a tour of the Look Up festival artwork which is featured and various walls around the city. I’m daring to dream that the future holds a wall for me.

The residency started on the 21st June 24 and runs for a full year. There’s so much I can do with this time, and I’m a very happy lady. This project is helping me transform the grief I feel for my losing my mother into something beautiful, and that has shown me a path out of this terrible feeling. I am very grateful for this.

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ARIM First Piece

It’s not quite finished, but it’s nearly there. My first piece for my Artist in Residence in Motherhood project.

Self portait

I thought a good starting place would be a self portrait. It captures me as I feel at this time. A mother, full of creation, yet hollow in missing my own parents. Acrylics on paper.

I’m looking forward to getting this tidied up and finished. Nonetheless, in the spirut of sharing imperfect pieces, it feels right to share it now, and I’ll be sharing my website and Insta publicly too. Let the accountability begin.

This came naturally to me. I’d love to try something like this on a larger scale, with lots of scope for rich colour and texture.

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ARIM Manifesto

I am here to rediscover the sanctuary I find in art. I want to make time for myself in this busy life, to create. I will focus on developing a variety of skills and exploring a wide range of ideas and mediums to document life becoming a mother, not long after losing my mother, and where I sit in the chaos. This work will help me untangle and negotiate the complicated feelings that have been defining me all too much. I want to regain my focus and discipline in spending time, even in small pockets, to create regularly, resulting in a body of work that I can see improving. I will share this work regularly to hold myself accountable and keep creative momentum going. I will seek opportunities to exhibit my work.

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ARIM Intro

My life has seen radical changes since setting up this site. The loss of my mother, and the birth of my son have thrown me into a chaos that has been all consuming. I had no idea where to start with negotiating these feelings, and for using them in my art.

It didn’t even feel right that I should prioritise creating when I have a son to look after, a house to keep clean. What a trap that is!

The thing is, making time to create is making time for me as a person. Not as a mother, not as a homemaker, but as an individual. It is also a very valid way of exploring the very large feelings I have been having of late.

Introducing ARIM – An Artist Residency In Motherhood.

This is a fantastic project set up by Lenka Clayton. Initially, it was her move into creating a way of working with her new family.

“When I became a parent traveling became tricky, money and time were tight, and the residencies I found couldn’t accommodate artists with families. I wondered how I might instead apply the framework of an artist residency to the wild new world that was unfolding at home, one that I usually felt entirely too tired to notice.” – Lenka Clayton

Not only did she create this residency for herself, but she opened the floor for others to create their own, and has been plotting them on a world map.

Today I submitted my plan. I want to take the next year on a residency, to make regular space in my life to develop my skills and create pieces. I aim to create a little something every week, and share here, to hold myself accountable, to keep working and learn to love what I create as is, without the need to be perfect.

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Poetry Series – Bird Brain

Eyes, at the lower centre, a cage growing out of the head with an open door, birds bursting out in all directions.

Based on this poem I published on Sonderful World March 8th 2015.

Welcome to my mind. My blessing and my curse, my best and my worst.
This is where the true me hides from you.
It is an aviary of birds diverse, a passionately adverse colourful verse to the dark hearted dead.
They chatter, squawk and swarm through my head.
Snatching under formed, fetalesque thoughts before they’re words to be said.
Before they’re comprehendable feelings rather than language that can’t be read.
The starlings swarm the most.
I am the starlings host.
They pull me apart by the threads of my characteral flaws
Unravel and leave me next to nothing, as nothing’s easier to ignore.
The Phoenix comes in my darkest moments. Eternal, internal, the starling’s opponent
Always almost too late to save my state from a fate that dilapidates all redeeming traits.
Before I am unsalvageable.
I’m simply unmanageable.
A tangible, consumable, notion of all that is unvaluable

The crows collect my bones.
They are the stones that condone any faith I seem to own.
The Magpies steal my eyes, my teeth, my wishes and beliefs
And they set to work reconstructing me in all my concepts
Building narrow, marrow bridges connecting the fleshy islands of my facets.
Creating a new world in which my tenacious conscious can reside.
Where birds of paradise bask in warm sunshine
Where toucans and puffins smile through painted faces sublime and glorious peacocks dare to flash uncompromising exquisity
I love each and every one who ever was and who will ever be.
And everything is beautiful
I inhale hatred and exhale goodwill
If only I could stay here without fear of self sabotage
But my entourage of starlings will return in a few days, to begin the process of self dismantling again
There’s no one I can blame. I have a mind I cannot tame.
A barrage of disdain.
A fear and sense of shame
If only I’d escape the cage that is my birdbrain.

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Colour

Exercises to develop use of colour

  • Paint a colour wheel
  • Play with mixing techniques
  • Textural application
  • Limited palettes

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Awakening

And here we are. ‘Awakening’. This is the moment I somehow reconnected with my teenage self. A girl who lost her inspiration the day her grandad died.

I’ve got twenty years worth of practice to catch up on but it’s not half bad. The eye, the window to the soul, and our connection to consciousness and all the magic that resides there. A rainbow of colour captures the beauty of potential in creativity. Anything is possible. A balance of chaos and structure, something that challenges me in life and on canvas. Cubes share space with flowing lines, vivid colours and tones oppose but join. And it works because I set several rules and allowed myself to break them here and there. A lesson well learned.

What aligned in my mind to open those floodgates? Twenty years of closure to my inspiration, and suddenly something clicks and it all comes rushing back. Since that moment I have been frantically scribbling ideas, connecting the dots between important moments in my life to unlock revelations. I believe this is the start of something. A journey begun long ago that for some reason was paused. Or was it? Perhaps I was always meant to leave that path, and learn lessons elsewhere to bring back to it.

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Connecting disparate elements

The connection between disparate elements can be challenging. It is a fine balancing act, too far either way and it doesn’t work. Not only this, but for it to truly work it must work for many, not just a few. I do not believe in elitism, I believe in sharing my message with many.

My work is not abstract, neither is it real. It could be classed as magical realism. It needs real elements, but stylised with a touch of the abstract, of the odd line. There is texture, there are segments akin to he building blocks of life, held together by the flowing lines that connect worlds.

Life is chaos. The essence of life is an explosion of colour, of texture, of everything. This chaos must be contained within the vessel of the body. There is a connection between these elements which is difficult to realise. But, it must be there, otherwise it wouldn’t work. These elements not only exist here, but throughout my own experience. Routine is a prison, and I am lost in chaos. I have had to find and negotiate a fine line to make this work.