Paintings, Spells, Rituals

I think the soul paints itself transforming.  I think, perhaps, there’s a witch in place mutating.  My paintings, spells and rituals engage with these processes; sometimes consciously and mostly unconsciously. Conceptually, I work with net-like forms made up of several elements: fragments, margins, scraps, minims. Each element offers a different vantage point and uses a different language. For a long time my conscious mind seems unable to understand if and how they connect with each other. Slowly though, and with faith, links reveal themselves. Working with an array of symbols, maps, colours, shapes and diagrams I paint my psyche as it vibrates with others in the landscape.  In my paintings womb-like shapes connect with cosmic landscapes, reflecting transformations of the calendar year, pregnancy, birth and the maternal, and the emergence of life.  Sometimes, birds, horses, serpents, seahorses and strange, otherworldly creatures seem to fade into worlds beyond our own. Sometimes, web-like filaments hover around these symbols; liminal and interstitial spaces between psyche and landscape, self and other, human and non-human, material and spiritual. 

I expand the parameters of my painting into everyday practices of life such as cooking, tending, gardening, preserving, composting, mending, gathering and making. Spells and rituals emerge, which like the paintings encounter the cycles and rhythms of the calendar year and with reference to lived experience in late capitalism. This intimacy with the external world loops back into the internal; each informing the other.