March - Shoots, blossoms & buds.

I’m not one for setting my work schedule for the year in January, I tend to work on overall goal setting for the first couple of months, but wait until the beginning of March to really engage with and start new work. For me, this feels in line with the emerging light and the first stirrings of shoots, blossoms and buds. As the world comes out of the shadows so does my urge to create and to make real my inspiration for the coming year.

The process of doing this is both wonderful and frustrating at the same time! There is the magicality of starting with nothing but pigments, brushes and surfaces, then ending up with something that is totally new, something that has never existed before, birthed from almost nothing into something of substance. Easy, charmed and flowing, miraculously alchemical, the turning of base metal into gold.

But this is only one part of the process, which runs alongside a more organic and chaotic one, one much harder to predict and control. I see what and how I want my work to look like, I take all the same steps as I always have done to achieve this, I use the same colours, the same techniques… But – no, I am regularly confronted with something that looks nothing like the planned piece! The elements take over somehow, the creative pixies of unexpected chaos and surprise, dance out into the studio, and reorganise the whole process into something shocking and surreal!

So I try to walk the line between my desired expectation and the glorious unexpected. In many ways, that is where the magic lies anyway, in the liminal space between those worlds... And nature may repeat herself each year, but even now, when I walk around the garden, the unexpected is ever present and her patterns of growth are similarly both magical and unpredictable at the same time.

I’m heading to the studio this week to firm up my painting plans for the next couple of months. The inspiration is ever real and present, just needing time and space to grow into something tangible. I will make a list and work out sizes and engage with the meaning behind each piece. Then I will prepare for the Muse to throw an element of magical chaos into the mix and I will try not to control that magic too much myself.