XENIA RESIDENCY
I started 2024 with a residency at Xenia.
To start the year in a place where I felt safe to let go and explore my art practice in a different way than what’s possible in my normal life was truly soul-nourishing.
During my time at Xenia, I was able to hear my thoughts and access a way into my work that had not been open before. The mixture of being close to nature and having the time and space to reflect made this possible. My January stay brought a mix of crisp clear sunny winter weather with frost visible during morning walks and other days with the storm Isha roaring outside the studio. All fuelled the experimentation and mark-making happening inside the studio.
An extension of my visual language emerged during my time at Xenia through experimentation and play. I left Xenia with a full heart, new friendships and memories of the landscape that will stay with me for a long time.
Back in London, I am continuing to develop my new series of work started at Xenia with the working title: Pockets, conceal or reveal? Taking the form of paintings, etchings and monoprints.
Pockets, conceal or reveal? This is the working title for my new series of work that I am developing this year. The work will address feelings and thoughts around identity, motherhood and fertility.
My mum’s diaries. She wrote these diaries for the three years it took for her and my father to be approved for adoption and kept writing until I was three.
Looking at motherhood from all angles. Love both Hettie Judah’s books, How not to exclude artist mothers and other parents and On art and motherhood , Pia’s world by Julia Peyton-Jones and Motherhood by Ann Coxon.
Words from my mother’s diaries are making their way into my work. My new series of works (paintings, etchings and monoprints) started at Xenia will explore questions around identity, fertility and motherhood through my lens of being adopted, my mother’s journals and being a mother myself channelled by abstraction.
Work in progress. New and exciting shifts are happening in my work this summer.
