Spiegeltent
A Spiegeltent is a large tent, invented in Belgium in the late nineteenth century, to travel to places where there were no dance halls. They are part canvas, part wood but with mirrors all round and lights in the top part of the tent.
I have experienced two of these – one for a Shakespearean play and the other for afternoon tea. I was entranced by the play of colour and light reflected by the mirrors and bevelled glass. Fabric swathes the roof of the tent and coloured stage lights illuminate the interior.
BROADWAY RESIDENCY - COLLAGES
Kaleidoscopic shapes and colours moving around us as we go about our lives. Layers of history visible in our surroundings, the old and the modern combining to create new contexts. Visual and verbal reactions to our environment.
My work emerges from my brushes with history. I use research, photographs and sketches to plan prints that present my responses colourfully.
SEEDS
Life is full of precious fleeting moments. My work tries to celebrate and honour some of those moments, reflecting on the effects of Covid19 and climate change.
During 2020 I did a ‘Residency at Home’ with a group on Zoom and focused on my garden.
I looked at very small parts of plants, and then researched seeds. The range of shapes and sizes was amazing, so the work reflected this, while using a microscope to enlarge them.
DUPLICITY
From 12 – 19 April 2018 artists from Nottingham, UK were invited to exhibit at Honfleur in an international art exchange. I was fortunate to be included in the group. I had already begun to create prints that were images of one thing, but began to look like something different, so I created a number of prints under the title 'Duplicity' for the exhibition. So the prints were not what they seemed to be. I was concerned about the state of the environment and our effect on it.
The prints represent a human presence in the world, signifying the physical effect of people in the anthropocene. During the exhibition artists explained their work to the whole group, and there were many exchanges of information and ideas.
WATER
I make art because I am interested in the effects of light on transparent objects. For me the differing qualities of light, reflections, and shade, signify the mysteries of life and the fragility of existence on earth. Recently I have been working on a project about water, how light reflects on and through the transparent surface, and how the surface can seem to look dark as well.
Water is now a precious commodity. It wraps itself around our planet and is essential for life. We use it for pleasure, but it can be a destructive force that erodes stone or drowns communities. I am concerned that we squander it and use it for trivial purposes. My recent work documents the ways that its use is both valued and taken for granted.
Akan goldweight
Travelling in Amsterdam I was drawn to a small bronze piece in an antique shop. It was an Akan goldweight.
Akan speaking people (from Ghana) traded in gold in the fifteenth century. They created decorative weights from brass using the ‘lost wax’ method, to ensure fair exchange of money for gold dust or nuggets. The abstract or geometric designs are the earliest, and each weight told a story or riddle, and related to a code of conduct in Akan society. Each weight was functional, artistic and related to Akan culture.
LIGHT
For me light is magical and joyous. This work is a reaction against a trend in contemporary art of a focus on death, darkness, anxiety and unease. Art contains relationships, rhythms, repetition and space. Colour is an element of space, and movement affects time and space. Antoni Tapies in Painting in the Void (1985:41) said: “Metaphors of space have always been introduced into painting, the play of fullness and emptiness, volumes,surfaces, light and shade....And, in recent painting in particular, the notion of 'emptiness' has assumed great significance.”
Light is the purest form of colour and it has an ephemeral, transient quality. Light can't be touched, and it changes with the time of day or place. The reflections seen may be mainly one colour but other hues can be seen around the edges of that colour, or at the point when the colours change.