On day 50 of being at home it seems like a great stepping stone to take a look at how this time has defined creative practice. Having such a concentrated time at home has imposed a period of reflection on my practice. The time has allowed me to look back on recent work, look at the materials I have to make work at home & what inspiration I can gain with limited travel & limited face to face interaction with others. So far its been useful to work on a few related but different projects simultaneously in order to move between them. Some details of that are outlined here.

Watercolour

Since moving to a ‘New Town’ late last year I have become interested in the make up of this fresh housing estate & how it looks from the edges viewing in. There is a certain personality here that seems different to anywhere I’ve lived before. In a period of about 5 years this estate on former farmland has spring up to the size & population of a well established 100 year old neighbourhood. When you walk around the estate you can see how the design of the place forces certain streets to be ‘Neighbourly’ or how styles in the architecture change to make it seem as though some parts are older than others. Something that is interesting in all of this is the silhouette of the roof tops against the background. Now, its not easy to notice this next feature of the estate without having it pointed out but there are no telegraph poles here with wires connecting to each house. Something that in most urban places of this size would be a common feature, a feature that would be filling up the skies with extra detail. Due to this there is a stronger emphasis on the features that do impact the horizon.

One further thing that I want to explore is how the town looks from the incorporated country park. There are areas where the history of the farmland is retained, one of these places is the original hedge row lane connecting the main road to the farm house. This lane has been transformed into a pedestrianised pathway linking some of the towns green spaces. It is from this path & the linked green spaces that that I take photograph of the roof tops peeking over the hedge rows & meadows. Looking in, it seems as though the town just pushed up through the ground. The transition from rural to urban is literally separated by a B-road.

In my water colours I attempt to make crisp lines & block colours. The process of painting with water naturally fights these elements so there becomes a tussle on the paper between the water flow with pigment & the taped edges. Each brush stroke adds water with colour that sometimes pools & collects at certain points leaving blotches of colour & pattern, not leaving perfect colour block. My normal form of colour application is with screen printing, a process where it is possible to achieve the effects im attempting to recreate with water colours. In light of this I have embraced the resistance the watercolours have in the way they are being applied.

Sculpture

I have been continuing to use materials that have been used in my practice for a while. Taking a cue from the work I have made previously, which has been stored in the garden shed, I have reworked the materials once more. This is the nature of this project as the intention is to continue to use these materials for an extended period of time.

Below is a developed version of ‘Rubble Bag Bale’, where I have used a transparent length of Monarflex to wrap the bale. At the top & bottom of the newly wrapped form are neat folded edges like the paper on a gift. The whole plastic bundle is cinched & bound by 2 black ratchet straps. There are folds & areas of sagging weight.

There are built up layers of transparent Monarflex creating a grid pattern along with layers made up of circular blue grommets. Beneath the plastic there is detail from the Rubble Bags such as colour, handles & patterns.

Taking into account the materials, layers & size, this work has a clinical feel. Plastic sheeting wrapping a form has a sense of the preserved, protected or isolated. Despite all of these materials coming from a building site this form has a clean appearance, lending to the clinical feel.

Light Box

It has been an ongoing daily practice to change the words in the light box that sits in my living room window. Images of that project can be seen in the #LIGHTBOXCOLB section of this website. This work has centred around communication & resourcefulness. This work is interchangeable making it the perfect lockdown project. It had promoted communication with other artists & prompted research, bringing fresh air into the pages on the bookcase. It also helps to track time through routine, weaving a steady narrative through lockdown.

This long period of time at home has brought to the surface the need to act on creative thoughts. Anything that I would have thought about doing outside of lock down would have likely been written as a note in my phone & not acted upon. Lockdown had provided the uninterrupted time to make something from creative thoughts. All of the research I could need is at my finger tips via the internet or on the bookshelf. It is currently possible to work through several lines of creative work, doing something everyday. It is a time of reflection & could define great changes in anyones creative process. A good question in all of this is, How do we get on when we have weeks upon weeks of time to create from one place, with the resources we have?