I owe a lot of my creative practice to my Mum. My childhood is full of beautiful fond memories. As kids she always encouraged me and my brother's creativity, she would make things with us, give us handmade activity books she'd made for long car journeys, invent games and assault courses in the garden with big sacks, let us build dens everywhere, giving us challenges like log-balancing jousting matches on woodland walks, etc etc. I think this pure innocent joy and making fun from seemingly uninteresting objects is something that has stuck with me throughout my life and I'm eternally grateful for my parents encouraging our creativity rather than putting it out.
I was a pretty ' feral ' kid, always in a tree, always scruffy, always making stuff. Constantly jumping from one project to the next. Different obsession every week. Not much has changed. I have a vivid memory of wanting a hamster when I was about 6 or 7, mum and dad said no so I made one out of masking tape and paper, and carried it with me everywhere, adding masking tape 'accessories' like water tanks and toys etc, until (as kids do) I went off the idea and moved onto something else. I would write extensive letters to the tooth fairy and give her offerings of terribly made miniature paper furniture in return for the 20p she would leave me. Bless my Mums heart for putting up with this and putting on her best tooth fairy handwriting to reply to all the questions I'd written out for her.
ANYWAY
This is turning into one big trip down memory lane, what I'm trying to get at is that a sense of childlike curiosity is CRUCIAL to my practice, I'd be lost without it. This year I've come to realise that I basically just want to think like I did as a kid! Children, as scary as they are, are the best artists because they just don't give a shit. They see the world as they want to see the world, they draw what they want to draw, they don't care if you don't like it, they're just doing it for them. This is so important. Finding inspiration and wonder in the smallest things in my daily life and seeking that feeling everywhere I go is what keeps me happy and creating. I can't walk 100m recently without saying oo isnt that a good shadow. Don't get me wrong I have days where I don't feel like making anything and I'm learning not to beat myself up about that or to force anything, its all part of the process.
Kids are the best, and I never want to lose that childlike wonder and awe of the world
OTHER THINGS INFORMING MY CREATIVE PRACTICE
- PEOPLE WATCHING - I'm a serial people watcher. Strangers are fascinating. I love making up stories and inferring what these peoples lives are like. I like feeling like a spy in the shadows, they have no idea I'm drawing their funny hat or watching the way they hold their glass. I have a specific little pocket sketchbook for people watching, its what inspired my COP project.
- HOARDING - I'm a bit of a hoarder to be honest. I like making my space feel like my space. Filling it with little trinkets and memories. I like finding and collecting things I find on me travels like scraps of handwritten paper or funny little objects on the floor. I hate throwing away scraps of paper, never know when that little scribble may be the difference between collaging life and death. I think I have a fear of forgetting. Memory is the most important thing and I guess I want to try and record and remember all of my experiences and whatnot, hence the amount of collected stuff and numerous scruffy notebooks.
- DREAMS - I've started keeping a dream journal by my bed, most of the time its illegible when I go back to read it but the sleepy scribbles can trigger images I remember from my sleep. I once dreamt about a little Turkish-style coffee shop and wrote it down in the morning with a drawing of one of the ornate pots. When I was in Sarajevo in the Summer I went to this incredible (crazy) coffee shop called Cajdzinica Dzirlo, owned by a man who looked like Gandalf, and it was the same as I'd seen in my dream. Weird.
- PODCASTS - I've been loving the Shortcuts podcast at the moment. It's so interesting and charming, relaxes me whilst I do my work. Can get lost in other peoples stories.
- TRAVEL - the past 2 Summers I've travelled around Europe, invaluable experience. I think I came back a more rounded person, I'd met so many people, seen so many things. I wanted to draw as a means of holding onto those memories and telling stories of what I experienced. Architecture, language, food, colours, people, transport, hills, rivers, currency
- MAGAZINES - a while ago I bought a set of the year of National Geographic magazines from 1986. I wanted to use them for collaging but I just couldn't bring myself to chop them up. Whenever I'm feeling stuck I flick through them, the richness of the photos and the knowledge that all of the imagery is analogue is really special to me. I love the adverts too for products which might not even exist anymore, or for things that were the height of technology back then (futurology ey). I love the work of Steve McCurry too, theres a really good mini documentary where he's given the last ever roll of Kodachrome film off the production belt to take a set of photos. V interesting.
- KEEPING MY HANDS BUSY. - I get quite restless when I'm sitting still, so watching films and that I have to be doing something, earlier this year I taught myself how to knit, I made a wobbly wonky scarf but I'm super proud of it in all its very holey glory. Knitting was almost meditative to me and something I'm going to keep doing to keep my mind and hand busy and give me time out to think.
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