Drawing Up, Drawing Through, Drawing Out.

I like to document my drawings as they emerge.  I may start out with an idea in mind, but more often than not the drawing reveals itself to me.  

It is a mysterious process requiring trust, patience, the ability to listen and the judgement to know when to stop.  

                                                 I am always surprised by what emerges.


I need to be alone and very quiet when I draw so I often work late into the night, when there are few distractions.  

I draw from my body, drawing up images from dreams, memories and sense perceptions.  My way of working is distinctively feminine and intuitive, images seem to come up, through and out of me, onto the page.  When I stand back from a drawing, images reveal themselves to me, as if the drawing has a life of it's own.   

                                                

My drawings communicate to me, like my dreams they are messages from another world, gifts from the unconscious.  

   "Guidance"    Charcoal on Paper 4ftx8ft

Please Pay Here

Sheepwoman is always on the lookout for funding possibilities in order to continue her valuable work.

Sheepwoman is very generous and giving of herself but she needs a shepherd, a field in which to graze, ruminate and make new work.

Sheepwoman comes from a different world not ruled by the market economy, she has many gifts and would very much like to play with you.

Sheepwoman needs to eat, and a simple shelter for night-times, if you would like her work to continue....

Please Pay Here.

Portobello Beach, Edinburgh, August 2009

Photographer Emma Reynard.

Haunted

I have been haunted by the tale of Rumpelstiltskin since the age of 22.  As a young art student I became interested in fairy tales, I expect because I was reading them to my son who was then 3 or 4 at the time, but also because I was interested in the link between fairy stories and dreams.  In the second year of my degree at Birmingham School of Art I had the opportunity to exhibit work in a vacant building, I seem to remember it being described as an  Old Library, but seemed more like a church to me.  


With this opportunity I decided to make an installation with the story of Rumpelstiltskin in mind.  At the time, like many readers of the story, I was struck by the image of spinning straw into gold and wanted to make work around this theme of transformation.  I procured several bales of straw, my memory fails me as to where from, and I borrowed a spinning wheel from the textiles department based in Gosta Green, Perry Bar, Birmingham.   

I didn't really know what to do next.  I wanted to make a performance, a piece of live art but lacking the skills, experience and training I was unsure how to begin.  I went home and spent the evening making a dress by altering one of my mother's petticoats, adding gold fabric and so on.  

Still I didn't know what to do, I remember eating lunch with my mum and then heading back to Birmingham, carrying my son on my shoulders, the golden dress in my bag.  


For my piece in our group show, I decided to lie very still on my bed of straw with a golden thread running from the spinning wheel into my hand.   I did the performance/installation twice, during the private view and then on a weekday morning when the exhibition was open.   I remember lying completely still for about three hours wondering what on earth I was doing, particularly as there was no audience.  I remember when I had finished my "performance" and was about to get changed when a friend came by with a message asking me to phone home.  I went straight to a phone box (it was the mid 90's!) still dressed in my golden threads.  


My dad picked up the phone, he said to me,
"Your mother died this morning".  
My heart was harpooned.  The physicality of the shock took my breath away.
"Where is she?"
I changed out of my ragged dress, picked up my son from nursery, caught the next train home.
"Can I see her?"


When I arrived home she was gone.  Her body had been taken swiftly away in a body bag, put into an unmarked van and driven to the morgue.  I felt as if I had been subject to a cruel magic trick; now she was here, making some lunch.

Within a day or two she was gone.  

This was the beginning of a journey, my mother was gone, but I had a golden thread in my hand and I began to follow it. 

Dreaming and Drawing

Dreaming and drawing are the ground from which my work stems.  I rarely show my drawings, I see them as workings out, they reveal ideas and images to me.  Drawing is an act of faith, I trust the drawing and allow it to lead me.  

I have kept a dream diary for almost 20 years now.  My artistic practice is a long, slow and constant process of bringing up images from the personal and collective unconscious. 

I am working even during sleep, and consider my dreaming time  precious.  I begin firstly by  writing up and drawing down my dreams and then if I am particularly struck by an image I may bring it to life in whatever medium seems appropriate, for example a mask, a performance, an action, an object, photograph, print, text or textile piece.  

I once heard the role of the artist described as "a fisher-woman trawling the sea of the subconscious, night after night, in order to bring up images to share" this image of the artist resonates with me and describes my practice.

.  

Off the back of a lorry

Sheep Masks in my Studio

Above are images of various mask experiments, in my studio in Oxford.