XENIA RESIDENCY
I started 2024 with a residency at Xenia.
To start the year in a place I felt safe to let go and explore my art practise 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 to access a way into my work that’s 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 full hart, 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? 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 mums diary’s. She wrote these diary’s for the five years it took for her and my father to be approved for adoption and for me to arrive.
Looking into motherhood from all angles. Love both of these books Pia’s world by Julia Peyton-Jones and Motherhood by Ann Coxon.
Words from my mother’s diaries are making its way into my work. My new series of work (paintings, etchings and drawings) started at Xenia will explore questions around identity, fertility and motherhood through my personal lens of being adopted, my mothers journals and being a mother myself channelled by abstraction.