ARTIST ESSAY This essay delves into my art practice which is my life by having a closer look at what that is. How and when I end up at the studio and how and why I head away from it. Where I am each day in body and in mind, for making and thinking. In 2017 I celebrated thirty years of my studio in Pialligo, a very small semi-rural orchard suburb on the edge of Canberra. Over the years I have come to spend more worktime outside of the studio and realise the value of this time towards making. As my research reading has expanded and become daily routine, writing has extended from this. It is a tool I use now to develop ideas. I write in the mornings – before the sun is up, before the world around me floods my day. It may be for only twenty minutes but my thoughts then are alive with clarity. If this time is broken with radio, phone or food I lose those thoughts – they quickly become crowded out by the sounds of the everyday. As I write words form images for new work. Words have shape, form and colour beyond their written form. Threads of the same place, the same season, for the same reason remain as ideas underpinning my work over the past thirty years. Some tracks I walk just get deeper, some fade, some return, weaving their way back into my sights but not always my footfall. Solitude and silence from the everyday are essential experiences for me to find a voice for thoughts and for filtering and fermenting ideas. Areas to the south and west of Canberra are where I go. Time spent in these areas is my field research. There is a valley inside Namadgi National Park where I breathe deeply. Gudgenby Valley, in Namadgi National Park is a place I return to, for a frost, for a sunrise, for a few days. Ready Cut cottage in this valley is where I undertook a five week artist residency in 2009 through a wonderful program that Craft ACT Craft and Design Centre run in conjunction with Namadgi National Park. Gudgenby is a valley of layers of history, of bush and boundaries, of loss and vacancy – of change - it is part of the story of Canberra and beyond. It is a place I have known of and visited since childhood, then and now loving the freedom of a day away.
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Reap 2013 kiln formed glass, rake head 160 x 160 x 7 cm
