Returning

Awakening at that hour of stillness and quietude before the sun has stretched, the air wringing itself of sleep, silence enshrouds me. Being back in the country, in my motherland, I have a yearning to write all day, to gather my feelings and synchronize rise them with my breath, to blow them into the air with abandonment and hope, to chisel the words my body aches to release. The dance of return, a beautiful metaphor for the carving of my path forward. Four years ago I did indeed return home, locking myself away in my words, I wrote my MA thesis about a boy yearning to reach the centre of his country - his heartland, his existence, the centre of language…The Heart of the Heart of the Country. I too yearned to reach the heart of….something, breaking down and reassembling the aesthetic experience as if this relationship with the text was somehow teaching me on a profound level, (only to become obvious years later) about the reversals and complexities of being.
    With movement and growth, I arrive once again at this heart point, journeying to the centre of my body to unravel the creative energy that painted these words on my page. I too yearn to find a place in the country - my roots, a meaning in that which unfolds in the magic space between movement and creative articulation. The synchronicities between art and life become poetic symbols for my own self-exploratory process. It seems natural then that my heart resonates with those words of four years ago, this time with the wisdom of the body. I wait with anticipation to see what comes to me, arriving at the heart, this place of ….

Finding Form in Lines...

Returning to Lamma Island, I find myself caught in a kind of indistinct space, fluxing between disparate feelings of detachment, of seeing my former home with new eyes - a new perspective, and alternately, a sense of awe at the beauty and serenity of this place. Having thrown myself into my practice this week, relishing the space outdoors immersed in nature and needing to integrate slowly and steadily, I feel the temptation to slip deeper and deeper into the web of narratives in my body. As I prepare to return to the UK, distant emotional residues seep through my muscles drawing my awareness to which body parts need love and attention - a sense of tenderness prevailing. I ask myself how am I able to apply confront, release, change and growth in challenge and what support is needed? As I set out to explore this through a movement score my attention quickly transgressed into a movement exploration focusing intensely on the concept of lines in the body and the relationship with the structure of words and images. Moving through the space in lines, experimenting with dynamic force invited me to explore how one can move in and out of structure with fluidly, precision and chaos. To what extent can I myself move in and out of structure in my life? How can I facilitate growth both inside and outside structure? Exploring movement on both a low and high level encouraged me to find a sense of balance between grounding and risk and welcomed the question, is there a shifting dynamic between my body and mind in structure?. Many questions in further need of exploration!
    The images delivered from this score mapped a new kind of territory in my art; one that is representational of figure and form rather than pure abstraction. Again I arrive at the question how does the body inform art and how does art inform the body and what is the interconnected relationship between symbols, the imagination and movement?…

Meaningful Co-incidences

Awakening on my last morning in California, I stretch my eyes out to the surrounding mountains consumed by mist, the sun seeking its entrance. A sense of movement in the air permeates, capturing memories, thoughts, reflections as they drift through the sky. Poetic symbols resonate my sketch book in the days leading up to missing my flight, inviting me to reflect on their metaphorical resonance and indeed, the fluid and cyclical relationship between art and life. The theme of letting go and dropping expectation has lead me to question how I can distinguish between gut feelings and desires? Exploring my own weighting on following my gut feelings, I have reached a beautiful point in my practice where my art informs my life as much as my life informs my art.