DRAWING FOR MY LIFE , 01 JUNE 2023
This collection is a fairly random selection from artwork I’ve made over the last decade. I wrote the following words as an Instagram post in 2022, but it seems as good an introduction as any to this collection. Insert the word artwork for drawing, and you'll get the point.
“I sometimes wonder what kind of life I would have if it weren't for the relief and release I get from making my work. It allows me to say things I half the time don't even realise I need to say. To release darkness. To admit wonder. To get these big large feelings of mine out of my body. God knows what I'd do if I had to hold them all inside.
Sometimes I don't even know where the things I do come from. I have no idea why I started drawing the words I wrote. It just happened one day, and I've continued doing it for over a decade because it feels right, because it says something I need to say.“
Instagram, 28 October 2022
COLLECTED WORK, 2011 - 2023
BEAUTIFUL HYDRANGEA, 2017
This artwork is a photograph of a page in my diary which I'd popped a hydrangea leaf in a decade before. I remember the feeling I had of opening the page in the diary, being struck by the continuing beauty of the leaf, by the memory of the garden I'd made in the home I'd loved, lived, married, grieved, and raised kids in all those years before. We carry our history with us, deep in our bodies. My history is embedded in my artwork, too.
Instagram, 26 May 2022
FOR ALL THOSE THINGS, 2011
I made an artwork from these words in response to the Christchurch earthquakes 22 Feb 2011. I made posters of the artwork, sent them down to Christchurch for people to post up in the streets, in the hope I could give some small comfort to those who had lost so much. I thought it appropriate then, to post this new iteration today, exactly eleven years on. The words still fit, eh.
Instagram, 22 February 2022
For all those things
that we didn’t have
and wanted
and lost
and were never given
and had
and had taken.
For all those things
we
live.
FW.
IT’S BEAUTIFUL HERE AT THE EDGE, 2018
IT’S BEAUTIFUL HERE AT THE EDGE, 2018
I've always in my life found that when you're super close to the edge of yourself, to your limit, you're also at your most open and vulnerable ... the walls become too hard to hold . And the key to making any kind of decent artwork is to stay open. Be open. It hurts sometimes, because it's sensitive as fck deep down inside, eh. But the beauty to be found in the depths is 100% worth the pain.
Instagram 08 August 2020
THIS LIGHT BETWEEN US, 2021
Because it's an extraordinary thing to me that what there is is light between us, not darkness.
I never thought I could have a love like this. I never thought I'd be whole enough, brave enough, to live in the light and not the shadows. To have a partner full of gentle light himself, who prefers sunshine to bruises, but can also find beauty in the scars I carry, both inside and out.
Instagram, 14 April 2022