Cherish

Depending on your age, just the sound of this word will conjure up either Madonna or Kool and the Gang (or in my case both, interchangeably) and those songs will linger for days!

Anyway, when I was invited to be part of Cherish the winter exhibition at Arteria 23 in Lancaster, I could immediately connect to the theme (and both songs) and have loved reflecting on how the pieces I selected can be seen through that lens.

The main inspiration behind my work is the sense of beauty in the mundane. The everyday moments/objects that become more meaningful the closer you get to them. It is not always my intention to weave my personal stories through my work but they are still always there on some level. None of my collages are random or devoid of significance to me, but hopefully they are also universal enough to resonate with other people and take on new meanings.

These four small original collages are part of the work I have for sale in the exhibition.

Hibernate

I have recently been reading Wintering by Katherine May and thinking about the notion of hibernating. It is something that feels so natural yet also brings up resistance. Pressure to produce, create, be constantly connected. As a solitude enthusiast, I hibernate regularly. By that I mean go inwards, to disconnect in a healthy way. My preferred method is to walk alone amongst the trees. It is here that I can plug back into myself and nature to recharge. This collage is a reference to that, and it is also just a lovely calming image of trees (it doesn’t need to be too deep does it?!). I thoroughly enjoyed slicing up some of my 1980s knitting pattern catalogues and creating woollen snowscapes on the forest floor.

Calm

This still life tells a little story from my honeymoon seventeen years ago. I was in New York, and navigating the delightful trinity of severe jet-lag, early pregnancy nausea/exhaustion and a hardcore caffeine withdrawal. We were in the Museum of Modern Art one afternoon and I just suddenly felt really sad, ill and defeated. I had been so excited to visit MOMA but had become consumed by anxiety, particularly obsessed with not harming my tiny baby in-utero. Thankfully my husband is an incredibly kind pragmatist and suggested I stop torturing myself and just have a cup of tea and stop worrying about it so much.

I remember we were sat at a beautifully minimal wooden bench and he brought me a hot caffeinated builders tea in a takeaway cup. I was like an almost dead plant that had been watered and immediately came back to life. Oh the power of tea. Hot drinks in general symbolise so much love and comfort to me, but this one has a special story attached.

I have added a fantasy cup design to replace the styrofoam cup for obvious aesthetic reasons. The pink background echoes one of the pieces of art we saw that day which seems to have been burned into my subconscious, repeating itself all over my work.

Cleanse

Inspired by a potted mint on my kitchen windowsill and the incredibly abundant nature of this everyday herb. Admittedly, when I used to grab a potted mint plant at the supermarket it was normally just because I was cooking lamb and was cheaper to buy a pot than a bag of cut herbs. Then I started learning about what a medicinal and nutritional powerhouse mint is, and all the ways we can use it to soothe, cleanse and heal ourselves. I found myself marvelling at this enthusiastic, easy-to-grow herb and it’s symbolism around protection, hospitality and balance. It feels so much more than a potted plant. Choosing the different green papers for the leaves was a lot of fun and I love the texture they create. I decided to leave the creases in the paper representing the pot, they look like cracks which is true to how my terracotta pots always look.

Haven

Tiny houses in the forest appear regularly in my work. I love the idea of retreating in solitude amongst the trees to a little simple hideaway. I don’t think I am unique in this - it feels like a beautiful, integral component of my mid-life changes. I love the way the trees are huddled and closing in, as if to hug the house. This wasn’t intentional, it just kind of emerged as I started to stick the trunks down. One of my favourite books is Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and it is always on my mind whenever I am creating trees out of trees.

The orange sky feels powerful and expectant and the blue moon a perfect companion to the dream-scene.

In addition to some original pieces, I also have a selection of my cards and prints in the exhibition.

Cherish runs from Wednesday Thursday October 10th until the new year.