It’s amazing what our physical artistic output can do to reveal our subconscious yearnings to our conscious mind, isn’t it? Every so often, I like to lay out all the art I’ve been producing over the last year or two and trace back over the heart patterns that are emerging, witnessing the themes that recur. These are things that I don’t really notice so well while in the day to day of creating but, when observed from a step back, the rhythm appears. ‘Ah, bodies of water are there are lot. Hmmm, I seem to yearn for big open skies. Light and darkness are always present. And community. Oh look, I drew a murmuration of starlings 12 times, or a humpback whale 22 times. Oh, there is usually a girl or a woman, out in some wild place in search of something. Ohhhh…’
Apart from recurring motifs, I am also able to see more clearly that I’ve been on a journey of softening. When I started making illustrations, I over-emphasised every line and form; hung up on being able to ‘draw properly’, scared of the earthier palettes my soul loved, scared of being less mainstream and conventional as a person, convinced I had to be more rational and analytical to be ‘worthy’ or to be employable (or, dare I say it, loveable). I painted as I felt back then, that I’d better somehow justify my existence and natural way of being, over-explaining myself with every highly literal and tight interpretation in my drawings. The things we do when we’re younger.
This week however, a wise woman said a simple thing to me which reflected this journey of deconstructing that I’ve been on; ‘let the feelings flow’. It reminded me that how I have always worked best is intuitive, starting from something abstract like a colour palette and letting something more defined eventually emerge, like a musician improvising some wordless soundings until a song eventually forms.
We all have our painful experiences and reasons for self-limiting and I have mine too. The hardness may feel like something that is here to stay but what if, just for a little while, we suspended that belief? What if I were to add an unreasonable amount of water to my paint, such that I couldn’t really control exactly where it flowed on the page? What if I were to draw with my glasses off and let the world be fuzzy,focusing on just the abstracts of light and darkness, what then? Would the feeling and the story still carry from me to you? If it comes from a deeper part of me, will it reach a deeper part of you? What if none of that even mattered and that the only thing in that moment was communion with the truth of my feelings?
My work these days looks quite far from where it began, and this feels exciting, confronting and vulnerable all at once. Regardless, there is no turning back, The only way forward for me is to keep being willing to soften, to open, to flow. It’s terrifying, but I can finally see a wee light on the horizon that promises the magic that lies in the distance.
It’s just 80 days until the release of ‘The Night Whale’ by author Bryher Mackenzie and I, which will be published by Walker Books on 6th June in the UK (and on 4th December in the US by Candlewick). You can pre-order it most places now.
“Let the feelings flow” beautiful advice, thank you Xo
Yes to all of this! And Your paintings are so beautiful! ❤️