Mistakes

Not so long ago, someone in conversation mentioned that I had made ‘mistakes’ throughout my life.

When I got home I felt perplexed about that ‘off the cuff’ remark and started to think back on my past. And when I did, I came to this conclusion.

Mistakes are like what you do at school when the teacher hands back your homework with red biro corrections all over it. But you take away that work and you learn from it. Just as you do from any experience you may have in life.

I have perhaps made bad judgement calls, but I would never put them down to a ‘mistake’ for they have all been part of a learning curve.

I remember doing a painting ('Sole Searching')) shown above. Nothing I did felt right and in my mind it went horribly wrong. I made the ‘mistake’, or (so I thought at the time,) of painting too many thick layers all at once and using painting techniques I was unfamiliar with.

I was going to throw it onto the bonfire, when a visiting friend saw something in it that I didn’t. She told me to give it a chance.

So I did and after much patience and painting in a way I’d never worked before, that ‘mistake’ turned out to be a painting I was very pleased with and not only that, I also learnt so much more from doing so!

So you see, a mistake can only be bad if you let it. But look deeper and you will find a mistake can be one of the biggest lessons in life and it’ll be those ones where you can grow and develop in a way no other experience can and when one looks at it that way. How can things ever be a mistake?!

To be an artist means.....

To be an artist, for me, means bearing my soul. Taking risks with matters of the heart.
It is true to say, when you look into my art, you will find my heART.
Sometimes it is a scary concept; I leave myself open and vulnerable to people’s judgements. There is nowhere to hide once I release my creativity. I cannot lie; I have no choice but be true to myself.

Sometimes that truth can be ugly, but when I create, it enables me to turn that ugliness into something very beautiful, into something positive, it can be a release, a way of letting go.
Art to me is therapy. So now and again, I have to remind myself of this. I get ‘stuck’. It is all too easy at times to get caught up in how things ‘should’ be done. We conform to convention because it is ‘safe’. But staying safe, means we stifle our own self-expression.
And so I have made a vow to myself and I urge others to follow suit, follow our passions, be it in writing or music, performing arts, painting or poetry. Find what is ‘true to you’ Don’t listen to people who put us down, believe in yourself, trust your instincts, respect others as well as yourself and above all else. Be creative follow your heART!

Whinne the Moo

I want to introduce you all to Whinnie the Moo. Whinne was knitted by a lady named Winnie in Kenya. She knits for a company called ‘Knittercritters' who support Ladies like Winnine by ethically selling their knitted crafts all over the world.
Whinnie was given to me by a good friend a year ago. He said he spotted her on the knittercritter stall one day at a craft fair and had to get her as she reminded him of me. Oddly enough, he isn’t the first person to have told me this now.
To look at her, she just exudes character and playfulness and she has the biggest smile on her ALL the time!
For a year, she just sat on my shelf looking down on me, I think willing me to pay her more attention. She once got stolen by one of the dogs here on the farm.
I had to rescue her from the jaws of my landlords retriever, she didn’t like that, so I put her even higher up on the shelf.
And then just as I was packing my bags for my Alderney trip 3 weeks ago, I was sure I heard her cry, so I picked her up and without giving her a second thought, I squashed her into the already overloaded rucksuck.
It wasn’t until I got to Alderney and put my tent up that she got to see daylight again. She kept me company that night whilst I lay alone wondering what I was doing in another Country on my own in a tent without a torch. (For another post). I was rather glad for her reassuring woollen sheep smell she carries about her.
That week she made us many friends. She broke all the barriers, young and old alike, a bond was formed with passer-by’s, even if it was with only a smile. We found that Whinnie was a good conversational starter. Curious people would ask about her and children just loved to hold her, no questions asked.
Admittedly some thought I was a bit nuts’ for carrying a stuffed cow around in my bag, especially when I had to ask people to take a photo of myself and Whinnie together! We got some strange looks, but it didn’t matter to us.
So from then on, a beautiful friendship has formed between us. She reminds me to not take myself and life too seriously. And that in every adult, there is a child at heart.
Besides, who on this earth can resist the love of a quirky looking cow who wears a brown hat?!

Space

I count myself to be very lucky these days.
I was painting away this evening in my little studio, when it came to my attention that not everybody has the kind of space i now have.
I say now, since this has not always been the case. For years I had to make do with someone else’s space which was more than likely a table in their kitchen. And then when I got my own home nearly 10 years ago where I still reside today. I was doing it on my kitchen table!
To me this was perfectly acceptable and for 9 years it was.
Whenever I had guests to stay for dinner, I used to have to throw my paints and brushes, palette knives, jars of water, canvases, inks, cloths and various ‘mark-making’ implements somewhere that wasn’t going to accidentally find their way into the food I had so lovingly prepared, or where the cats and dogs could walk all over and spread what paint I hadn’t managed to spill, all over the rest of the house.
But last year, my landlord decided to convert the remaining 18th century barn he had which backs onto my courtyard into an office. Up until then, I had been using it as my very own huge store shed. It had a dirt floor, rats I was sure hid beneath the flint walls and in the summer, Swallows used to nest amongst the beams. But deep down, I felt it could be made into something more useful like my very own studio!
So when my landlord announced last year that he was going to get the place converted and would I move my ‘junk’ my heart sunk. My dreams of a grand open space with skylights and windows from floor to ceiling with heating and running water smashed to smithereens.
So I was over the moon when he then turned round to say once the floor was concreted and the stud walls put in place, I could still have access to a part of it.

So a year down the line I have made that space my own again. I have to be careful though. I cannot use it ‘officially’ due to building regulations.
I have to still share it with none existent bats (part of the agreement for allowing my landlord to convert the building was to place bat boxes in my part of the barn)
But what I have been able to do is put roof insulation in. Eventually when money allows, I will put in a better lighting system instead of the two measly light bulbs I currently have. I may even get a little gas heater for the winter.
Its not exactly the state of the arts kind of studio I had in mind, but I don’t care. What this space allows me to do is to walk away from my work when I need without having to clear up each time.
As much as I love what I do, sometimes even I need a break from painting and by having a break means to not have it on view to remind me of how crappy a painting might be going at that point in time.
 So when I go in my kitchen these days, I can cook, I can have a clear kitchen table I can have guests for dinner, I can really have ‘space’.
So when artists say they don’t have the space, I think what they really mean is; they have the space, just not the room to shut the door when it all gets a bit too intense.