Artist Statement
Art is for the forests, the mountains, the beetle under your boot.
Have you ever told a poem to a tree?
What did it say?
A woodland is a gallery of ladybugs and leaves and the ocean is an exhibition so large it cannot be sold. We receive invitations at birth and call them senses.
Art can be human.
It is to be touched, felt, smelt, loved. A mother creates life but it is the artist that builds the bridge between life and living.
My art changes, evolves, with seasons and colours and feelings. It cannot be trapped into a box of words or fabric or pins or paper or dirt. I am not a creator, I build images with my senses and it takes the shape of a small part of my world.
My art seeks to connect the disconnected. I want it to say, ‘Look at me, I am right in front of you. You cannot ignore me’. Some people believe freedom to be the absence of connection, but I think it is more accurate to say that disconnection is the absence of freedom.
As a teenager I organised a solo exhibition titled ‘Freedom and Isolation’. It was the beginning of a search for a definition of freedom that I know very well will never be complete. Regardless, it has since made an impact on every art piece I have created- whether consciously or subconsciously- and, unsurprisingly, causes much of it to overlap with political and ecocritical themes. As a citizen of this Earth first, and an artist second, I am appalled with the way I have seen human beings treat not only the world around them, but each other and themselves. The cause of this behaviour is complex, but I believe it is being consistently perpetuated by a fear of connection.
My art comes from the Earth. My ink and cloth and charcoal and paint are made of the same stuff you are.
What are we so afraid of?
A glimpse into my world
my philosophy & beliefs
My personal philospohy probably comes closest to being described as 'eco-anarchism', however, I am dismissive of using labels for myself, and therefore prefer to share these beliefs through my artwork and writing.
Therefore, please see poem to the right (or below if you are reading this on a mobile phone).
An older man, aged rather more by life experiences than time spent in the world, clutches a small box.
I notice he is shaking slightly. He is on his way to spread his wife’s ashes in the sea and is terrified of spilling them before he arrives.
A young boy, smaller than most his age, presses his nose against the window. He has never seen the sea before. I wonder if he knows how it roars- unlike the lake behind his mother’s house- his only point of reference.
A young woman in a wheelchair wishes to feel the sand one more time before she is completely paralyzed. Her brother is with her, though she knows he came mostly for his own sake.
I sit behind the boy, close enough to see the condensation on the window from his breath, and beside the old man so that he has a hand to hold, just in case. Our elbows barely touch and he moves to the edge of his seat.
I know that we will not see the sea today. I know that the driver will have a seizure in a few minutes. He has been denied medication by his doctor because he cannot afford it.
I say nothing because I cannot drive this bus. I do nothing despite the fact that I, too, would like to see the sea today.