Paint is controlled spillages of emotion.
Paint is sensuous, visceral.
Paint is pricey.
Paint takes you away from your family.
Paint is sexy, paint is dirty, paint is bad for your health, addictive. Paint is a siren calling from the rocks. Paint is best done when sober, like swimming.
Paint is a lover, or a mate. At times illicit, heady, not to be trusted. Or a true companion. Like a dog, and just as messy.
Paint is a distraction. I think about painting lying in bed late at night. I daydream about painting whilst my children call me from another room, or tug at my sleeve while I am in my own paint-filled planet.
Paint is a form of self-soothing, the same as food, drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping.
Paint is a hiding place.
Paint breathes life into time. I am so glad to be alive, I just want the work to feel alive too.
I want to make work for the sake of saying something honest and I’m interested in making something that holds me in a state of possibility. I want to discover something that I didn't know before.
I have been trying to reconcile being an artist with motherhood; each of these requires dedication and intensity and time. Both of these are states of being; they are not roles that you can step in and out of any more than you can take your legs on and off (unless you have prosthetic limbs). They are immersive, at times difficult to bring together, but necessarily mutual. Each can sustain the other, if you allow them to work in symbiosis rather than competition or conflict.
There are always questions; questions about the work, about life, about how to parent, how to communicate with others. These questions are part of my work, and I am building them into the work. I see the experience of being a painter, and a human, as a moment to be lived, as a process, and as a set of questions to tackle and pursue rather than resolve.
