Individual outsider
"So, Miss Honeychurch, you are travelling? As a student of art?"
"Perhaps as a student of human nature," interposed Miss Lavish, "like myself?"
"Oh, no. I am here as a tourist.”
(A Room With A View by E.M. Forster, 1908)
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This exchange, from a treasured classic, resonates with my artistic practice. Although in life I am a Miss Lavish “student of human nature”, by trade I am not an occupational ‘artist’ in the sense of formal instruction or career. My awareness of creative giants, genres, styles and influencers is limited. I feel both imposter and outsider – a ‘tourist’ travelling an unfamiliar landscape, and I am not sure how long I will stay.
I journey as observer rather than participant - with a voracious appetite for visual stimulation, and with baggage of over-active imagination and tendencies to introversion, fatalistic fantasy and escapism. I feel purpose in evidencing independent original thought and individuality – hoping to leave a legacy of positive contribution, and a mark of existence.
Creative impulse - gift or affliction?
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My creative process is driven, restless, controlling, and illustrates a tension between violent random experimentation and self criticism. I am frustrated and destructive in my quest to achieve a self-imposed expectation - regularly aborting ideas and exterminating productions before completion. However, maturity and the influence of outside opinion has brought confidence to revisit and build on past practice; using competition deadlines to force a sense of accomplishment. My use of bold colours and the fluid and adaptable mediums of acrylic, ink, watercolour, and digital media lend well to this passionate, transient and agitated state!
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Work in portraiture has been underpinned by a fear of loss and change, and a desire for permanency; to preserve the personalities closest to me. I am also motivated by wanting to give the viewer a glimpse into a special and unique soul they may never meet in person. I aspire to capture character rather than physical accuracy, with a style and technique that is intuitive not learned.
Little space
This eclectic collection of artistic representations of people, landscapes, objects, shapes and patterns, has been brought into being without luxury of studio environment or natural light. I work in an isolated living space, exploring my creative ideas surrounded by the clutter of life’s mementoes, and under observation from a photographic wall of sepia ancestors.
In 2012, a spontaneous and inexplicable malfunction altered my
eyesight; multiple symptoms of a ‘Posterior Vitreous Detachment’ severely obstructing and disturbing my vision. This experience, along with the side effects of subsequent vitrectomy surgery, has brought into focus how fundamental visual creativity and practice is to my personal fulfillment, which in turn has led to this decision to take my work out of the dark and into the light.
