When I begin a new creative piece, I never really know when it starts. There is usually a period of several months, sometimes up to half a year, sometimes only weeks, when I do not noticeably want to create work, but the work is being created beneath the surface.

​

There will be an emotional something that draws my attention. I never quite know what that something is. It is not as though space itself makes it available. Rather, there is a period of enrichment: sensory enrichment from multiple different stimuli. This can be anything from a life that is experienced, witnessed and observed.

​

During these latent, or perhaps fallow, periods, I might make notes, take photographs, or encounter something that captures my imagination. A coaching conversation, the light shining through a cloud formation, the experience of butchering a deer oneself. Such images stay with me and later inform how language emerges through the work.

​

For a long time, I worked almost exclusively with black ink. I enjoy the precision of ink, along with its permanence. Once the mark is down, that is the mark. I like the mental state this encourages: the precise, sharp acceptance of what is in this moment. There is an almost zen-like quality to it.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

My early work often involved black ink swirls exploring boundary. I became deeply interested in the crispness of the boundary itself. Eventually these forms began to transform into words.

Yet I have often found it difficult to conceptualise these experiences into words. Sometimes when I write a poem or a line in an attempt to capture what happened, whether a dream, an event, or some fleeting experience, the result lacks fluidity. It struggles to reimagine the experience.

​

So I began drawing words and eventually these morphed into amorphous forms. I am not entirely sure what is happening there, but I like it, and that is very much where my work sits at the moment.

​

More recently, I have begun adding colour into my practice. Colour captures something more emotional and visceral. Looking back, I notice that my creative practice initially centred on the container of creativity: the discipline of creativity formed through black ink and lines. One stroke. One mark. No retreat. I can understand this practice now as the art of boundary setting and acclimatising myself to boundary after a particularly difficult part of my life. 

​

Through that container, through knowing the boundary of expression, I have been able to evolve into more expressive and emergent pieces. Not that ink itself is not emergent. Rather, it carries a different flavour of discipline. Perhaps what colour pencils enables is better described as staying with the dance of the creative process whereas black ink enables understanding of the container for expression.

​

Colour pencils particularly enable this. There is a blur between what is coming into being and what is yet to be formed. Using colour pencils alongside ink allows me to play with the uncertainty of the mark being made and then embellish or accentuate the theme with the boldness of ink.

​

While pieces may begin with a word or a sentence, the shape of the work is never preconceived. I continually find myself surprised by what has been formed. Or perhaps more accurately: I notice surprise after the piece has emerged.

​

It does not feel as though I create the piece. It feels as though the piece is formed through the conditions of attention, page, context, ink and pencil. 

​

Over time, I have learned to differentiate between moments when art is being made and moments when I am trying to make art. If I want something to be formed in a particular way, then for me that is no longer a practice in contact with a stimulus or an idea. It becomes projective and stale. Often times these days are the most frustrating!

​

Of course, all art is projective to some degree. It is about the mutuality or dialogue at the meeting point. This concept can trouble me at times, which may be why I also collect stones and enjoy their beauty simply as they are. 

​

But perhaps what interests me most in my own expression is the possibility of non-projective projection. Or maybe a better word is contact.

​

Art made through.

​

Art made with.

​

Rather than art done to or onto.

​

These are the pieces I can return to years later and still remain in dialogue with. They continue to teach me.

​

Increasingly, words feature less as the guiding force of my practice. Not that they do not feature, but rather the foundations of my current work lies in fertile suspension through which words may materialise, rather than vice versa. I might scribble with crayon, use colour pens, or close my eyes and move ink across the page. Out of that movement, patterns emerge. The pattern becomes a conversation, and I enter into dialogue with the page. I find this way of arting enables the dog to wag its tail rather than the reverse. 

​

Sometimes this dialogue does not happen within a single session. It is also the case I make the first mark and absolutely fucking hate it. But I do not destroy marks. I step back because I have developed enough trust to know that every mark is contact and I can return when I am ready.

​

This style of work can be confronting. It can be jarring. I am often jarred by what emerges. But these days I no longer create the necessity to complete a dialogue that is not yet ready to be had. If I sit at my desk for an hour or two and nothing is imprinted on the page, or only a single mark appears, that is still the work.

​

That is how all my pieces are formed.

​

Some spring out in ten minutes.

​

Others take months, years.

​

By not preconceiving what I want to see on the page, I allow the page to show me what wants to be seen. To me, this feels like a profound invitation, not only for artistic practice, but for life, curiosity, and coaching dialogue into the realms of emergence.​​