Being alive makes me want to capture, express and expose what I see and how things feel.
2 What do you intend your work to convey to an audience?
Love for life – sometimes beauty, sometimes humour, sometimes absurdity. Maybe a sense of possibility and that its ok to just be and allow whatever comes out.
3 Why do you work in your chosen medium and format?
I work in lots of mediums. For a long time I specialised in film and video because it has the capacity to show what is thought as well as what is said and I do find that fascinating. I still love drawing and painting as a way of making images in a much slower way without technology.
4 Technically speaking how do you go about constructing your work, that is the image or object itself? What devices do you employ?
It’s a lot less conscious for me than that. I tend to have some materials around me and then just start making things.
5 Which period(s)/artists/specific works of art are you influenced by and how directly? How does this manifest in your work?
(I find it hard to accept there are still so few really recognised women artists and film makers – so from early on I was mainly influenced by men – also I grew up in a quite patriarchal family)
I loved Miranda July’s film “You me and Everyone We Know” and Michel Gondry’s film “The Science of Sleep” and Laura Owens paintings and Amy Tan’s book the “Joy Luck Club” and Maya Angelou’s full autobiography. I also love Islamic art and rugs and the book “The Blood of Flowers” by Anita Amirrezvani.
I love the films of the French New Wave, Fassbinders films, Almodovars films, Italian neo realism and Fellini. And Raphael. And Leonardo and Michelangelo, Matisse and Picasso, Woody Allen and Scorsese and both Coppolas and Jane Campion and Alison Murray.
I love Arte Povera and Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Bill Brandt, Edward Weston, Hannah Starkey, Sophie Rickett and Chantal Joffes painting, Eisenstein, Renoir etc etc the impressionists! Van Gogh! Lee Miller, Pina Bausch
There’s so much good and inspiring work but I don’t get influenced very directly, my work comes out of me but the work of these sorts of people encourage me to let things out and to think openly.
6 What stimulates/informs your work from the world around you?
Light and life – I just sort of let myself be drawn to things
7 What stimulates/informs your work from your own personal experience?
Thinking about where I come from – starting with my family and childhood and also about now and just the act of living, the relationships within my life, the conflicts and complexity of people and situations
8 From where do you derive your other visual source material (i.e. non art historical) and how do you implement this material within your work?
I don’t really work that way, I just let things happen - maybe it’s a more osmotic process than this question suggests
9 What are the main problems that you face in making your work?
Finding ways to market it
10 Where do you intend to take your work from here?
I feel something is gestating. I have been filming a lot over the years and sometimes things don’t make sense for a long time but I feel something is forming. Often I’m not sure where things are going or how to take them forward and then it becomes quite clear. Its often very slow. Painting and drawing instead has given me the time and space to allow for this pause.