Becoming a Garden 2023
In the studio
Raw pigment, egg tempera, graphite on reclaimed wood
Sizes variable, between 20 – 78 cm I 8 – 30 inches
In the studio
Raw pigment, egg tempera, graphite on reclaimed wood
Sizes variable, between 20 – 78 cm I 8 – 30 inches
Graphite, watercolour, egg tempera on sewn vintage book pages
24 x 18.4 cm I 9.5 x 7.25 in
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Inspired by the shapes and colours of Hilma af Klimt’s work, I made these little paintings to work in tandem with a series of drawings titled Becoming a Forest (page 18). They are drawn onto the sewn pages from a hundred-year-old book that was coming apart at the spine. Although it felt odd to make marks and colour over the existing story, there was a subtle joy in the melding of words to visual imagery and the value of extending the life of a book that seemed destined to be discarded.
Watercolour, ink, graphite & coloured pencils on 30% recycled & Fabriano paper
43.2 x 35.6 cm I 17 x 14 in
149.9 x 229.6 cm I 59 x 90 in
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THEY TRIED TO BURY US BUT THEY DIDNT REALIZE WE ARE THE SEEDS
This series of watercolour paintings explore beyond the surface, the seen, the known of the natural world.
They are roots, branches, wings, mycelium, seaweeds; they are energy and vibration.
They are my versions of how living elements communicate with each other: measurable, recorded energetic language.
The garden of the world has no limits except in your mind. ~Rumi
The Shape of Afternoon
Graphite, raw pigment on panel
92 x 122 cm I 36 x 48 in
The Shape of Evening
Graphite, raw pigment on panel
136 X 122 cm I 53.5 x 48 in
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Thinking about Mirror Neuron Theory, about time passing, make believe and imagination. These two pieces were an attempt at mirror drawing: looking at found elements of nature in my studio, allowing lines and forms to develop instinctively then recreating similar lines and forms on the opposite side of the matrix. Drawing for a few minutes, then mimicking the opposite. Painting, then mimicking the opposite. They are not an attempt at perfection but a play on curtailing wildness, at allowing the imagination to build an unhinged narrative. Although I have hundreds of photographs (Exploring Totem series) that originally inspired these, there are only two pieces in this series.
Raw pigment on reclaimed wood panels
16 pieces
16.5 cm I 6.5 in round
Installation size variable
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This set of sixteen paintings, each 16.5 cm in diametre, are the wood cut outs from the ceiling light panels above my studio area in the Marlborough College Art Department. I filled a hole in the middle, sanded the surface and edges, then gesso coated them before mixing a dark navy blue reminiscent of blue prints to serve as the base. There are many layers of paint and gloss medium on which the white paint plays, dripped, painted, wiped and repeated.
I wanted to create images that appeared both underwater yet recognizably garden inspired; to portray motion and the sense of present and absence. To conjure moments of joy with mystery, mirroring the human experience of connecting with nature.
What Once Was, 2016
31 pieces
Watercolour on photo paper
each 42 x 59.4 cm I 16.5 x 34 in
In situ Back Lane West Redruth, UK
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What Once Was is a collection of thirty-one paintings, each one a loose rendition of photographed boats. As research for designing and making the tea bag boat, I documented a wide variety of small vessels tethered in harbours all along the Cornish coast. These photographs became an ocular journal —a way to record not only shapes, sizes, colours and watery places but to act as a reminder of the emotional and exteroceptive aspects of living a life by the sea. These stripped down painted interpretations displace the object boat from its watery setting, visually referring to inner/outer, conscious/subconscious, geographic/ethereal. They are unplanned, unmeasured, unrefined. The water drenched with pigment is allowed to forge its own course as the paper buckles to accommodate moisture while the drips and bleeds that move from the basic boat forms speak beyond shapes and shadows into movement and motion. They dwell in the interstices of what once was.
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Onto Into Above #1-4, 2015-2016
Acrylic, graphite paint, graphite
117 x 117 cm I 48 x 48 in
117 x 213 cm I 48 x 84 in
In sit, Lamorva House (Woodlane Campus, Falmouth University)
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Interview below excerpted from the Tender to the Sea catalogue. JM is PhD candidate Jo McCallum.
JM ~ Onto Into Above, the paintings. Colour! The colours of the sea. When we started this conversation, I mentioned the colour palette being quite seasonal, quite dark, whereas these paintings, you have used some of those teals, those blues, greens, even the lime green of summer. What changed here?
SM ~ These paintings were made in January. They were made for two reasons: I needed colour and I needed to paint. I hadn’t painted in over six months and I was starving for it. It’s part of who I am, like music, or reading, or walking. So they were made in the winter and were partly a result of trying to describe to people about where I was living. I kept saying that it is a land of impossible colours and unbelievable light, and that was how I was describing Cornwall to people. I hadn’t seen some of these colours anywhere else except here. That, in tandem with the light and the weather. I wanted to try to translate those aspects into painting. So they were mostly done in the winter, then I added the white corner curves in the summer to give an additional viewpoint, a counterpoint to the colour field.
JM ~ When I first saw them I thought the sea is a chameleon! You’ve captured so many of those seasonal changes. It’s interesting that from January to summer you’ve come out of hibernation and away from this darkness. And you have shadows here. Shadow boats. Again, they don’t look adrift…they almost look as though some of them are beached but they are travelling into this light…
SH ~ They are. In some ways the paintings draw upon photography. The boats being quite realistic and the white area is showing light refraction. I had hoped to make the central white area an ambiguous place, asking where the boats are going, or coming from. They could be directed to more of the same, or to nothingness, or to everything. And the shadow is obviously the same shape as the boat but it is a void, a gap.
JM ~ These are far more evocative of life and death than the other work; perhaps an imagined world. This is an afterlife…and a soul. And moving backwards or forwards, or emerging from it. There is far more of that quality.
Adventures in Transportation & Meditation, 2014
10 in series
Acrylic, graphite paint & graphite on wood panel, self framed
119.4 x 122 cm I 47 x 48 in
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The Adventures in Transportation & Meditation paintings are a fascination with the collision of natural environment and man-made elements, represented here by vintage cars and architectural drawings. Raised as the only girl with three older brothers and thinking of road trips, dreamscapes, and environmental challenges, I love imagining new places for the viewer to enter into contemplation. Curiously devoid of a human component, the vehicle propels into or away from deliberately ambiguous and geographically anachronistic natural elements, raising the questions “Where are we going?” and “What are we leaving behind?”
These paintings represent the more surreal and adventurous aspects of our life full of journeys, challenges and creativity. You know yourself the dreams I mean . . .
Elissa Cristall Gallery, Vancouver Canada November 2013 (sold)
Evolution Series
Acrylic, graphite and graphite paint on panel
121.9 x 91.4 cm I 48 x 36 in
50.8 x 50.8 cm I 20 x 20 in
25.4 x 25.4 cm I 10 x 10 in
60.9 x 71.1 cm I 24 x 28 in