The Poetry and Stardust Collection

we are all stardust - Carl Sagan

I started this year feeling this real need to play and experiment. Throughout 2021, I’d been feeling constrained and was wanting to break free of that. In the past playing and experimentation have literally been foundational in building my artistic practice. I had so many ideas bubbling away in my head and what was high on my agenda was pushing the idea of serendipity - or accidental happenings into my practice. Introducing an uncontrollable element - one that I have to work with / work around is pretty important to me. Stops me from getting too precious about anything. It’s kinda a metaphor for life - I’m not really as in control as I’d like to think I am.

Simultaneously, two long years of pandemic and what seems to be infinite amounts of unrest around the world led me to feel so very heavy in my soul. I craved a lightness - not as an escape from the realties of this world, but to have joy alongside this sadness.

I didn’t know where this would lead me at the beginning of this project, but I trusted that the process (which is really a fancy way of saying - ‘just getting in there and making’ would lead the way.

Slowly the collection started to evolve and one day as I was ironing some of my bundle dyed canvas, I started to see little worlds appear in front of me. There was a grace to the movement - like a summer melody - it felt like poetry to look at and indisposed within the poetry there was stardust strewn among it. So as these worlds began to form, I started to add my own marks to them.

So much of my inspiration is drawn from my everyday - colours I seen my morning dog walks, marks left behind on driveways, to me they all tell little stories and with these marks are my reaction to the world I see around me.

I’m so proud of this new collection. They look like I wanted to feel, if that makes any sense - like a light breeze in the summer, kinda like blossoms falling from a tree - gentle and unassuming.