handmade art books
Sometimes I’ll find a book in a charity shop - usually a hard back, one that speaks to me is often a poetry book. I want one that I can have an interaction with.
Some people might think it’s sacrilege to paint over and in a book, mutilation of it. I see it as an object that I’m interacting and responding with and transforming. It feels a bit like graffiti, adding to the magic that can be found within the pages of a book.
black hole
A contemplation on feelings of the black hole, created in 2014. For anyone who has experienced depression, or dark emotions that weigh down upon the psyche, the black hole within is hard to face, acknowledge and sit with.
This book was created whilst studying for an MA in Art Psychotherapy. Part of the course included working in a placement within the NHS with CAMHS (as it was then called - Children and Mental Health Services). I was working shifts in children’s residential homes simultaneously to subsidise the studies. I felt the darkness of the young people I came in contact with, aware of it from my own interactions with my shadows. The book I chose is ‘Running to Paradise’ by W.B. Yeats. Running to paradise and wrestling with the black hole, realising that somehow they belong together.
if i sit in this place
Made when I first moved back to England in 2004
It was a scary time walking into the unknown. The figure represents myself wondering how things could move when I felt unable to. Yet, the days pass, the moon wanes and waxes, and things do change.
The lino print appears on each front page, like a starting point to my contemplation, as I pondered how to move forward when I felt so lost. The paper is handmade, and I sewed the pages together.
There’s another story happening simultaneously on the opposite pages. It’s from a children’s story that I wrote about a girl named Tranay Delaunay.
