Practice: Constellated Form

I have devised a constellated form that brings together the multiple elements comprising each artwork. Developed over decades of practice-based research, this methodology offers a flexible container for different media while remaining open to continual reconfiguration. Drawing from alchemy, network theory, and feminist approaches, it creates artworks that resist conventional object-based categorisation.

Each work unfolds as a constellation of eleven interconnected elements that may be distributed across time and space. Some elements are documented and exhibited; others remain ephemeral or private, creating complex networks rather than singular objects.

The Eleven Elements

These elements are provisional and continue to evolve as the practice develops.

Painting

Paintings develop through automatic and receptive techniques, then evolve through successive layering and considered micro-decisions. Surfaces accumulate where figurative forms, cosmic terrains, and geometric structures emerge through processes of response and recognition. This encompasses drawings, collages, prints, and mixed media. Certain pieces function as interfaces orienting relationships between dispersed elements, operating simultaneously as fragment, diagram, symbol, and threshold within the evolving constellation.

Constellations

Each artwork manifests as a fluid formation bringing together paintings, textual fragments, dream materials, and ritual processes. Rather than fixed compositions, these structures preserve potential for change as elements gather, dissolve, and reconfigure. A constellation might comprise exhibited paintings alongside seasonal ritual documentation, plant cultivation records, dream fragments, and theoretical texts—each component essential to the work's complete expression.

Fragments

Images, sensations, and textual materials emerge in preliminary form, often lying dormant until conditions support their development. These mark where psychic and imaginal material first enters tangible form. Visual, textual, or sensory configurations hover at the edge of articulation, retaining their provisional quality as they await recognition. Fragments circulate across paintings, writings, and rituals, transforming each time they are re-encountered within new configurations.

Dreams

Psychic material arises through unconscious processes, dream incubation, and imaginal practices, integrated as core components rather than peripheral inspiration. These processes yield images, figures, and encounters accessed via receptive states including active imagination and dreamwork. Not all material translates into tangible form; much hovers between emergence and dissolution, providing a primary source feeding the wider constellation.

Rituals

Rituals are devised for symbolic transformation through encounter with psyche, landscape, and cosmos. They create structured opportunities for relationship and participation, generating both documentation and ephemeral experiences. Some rituals produce tangible outcomes—texts, images, or objects—while others exist only as temporary openings that influence the broader creative field.

Tending

Tending encompasses practices of care and preparation that extend across multiple registers of the work. An ethics of care—embodying compassion, love, and hospitality—operates as both method and content within the constellation. This includes the cultivation and harvesting of plants to create herbal preparations, the tender attention given to graves and the navigation of grief, and the ritual cleansing of spaces through incense before creative engagement. These diverse practices share a common commitment to creating conditions that support transformation and relationship. The work generates recipes, ritual instructions, writings, and textual fragments that document and transmit these accumulated wisdoms of care.

Turnings

Calendrical art engages with seasonal thresholds and the interplay of light and dark throughout the year. Turnings mark moments where internal creative processes align with seasonal transformation, creating recurring opportunities where ritual, image, and reflection intersect. As the work moves through cyclical time, fragments surface, paintings emerge, and constellations reconfigure according to natural rhythms.

Living Archive

The archive functions as a dynamic repository where earlier materials exist in various states of accessibility. It operates as an active reservoir where fragments, writings, images, and ritual documentation accumulate over decades. Some materials remain readily available while others lie dormant until conditions support their reemergence. This enables past work to participate in ongoing creative processes as elements are drawn into new configurations.

Alchemy

Alchemical processes explore transformation between material, psychic, and spiritual dimensions through the classical phases of blackening (nigredo), whitening (albedo), yellowing (citrinitas), and reddening (rubedo). These align with seasonal cycles and consciousness states: from winter solstice unconscious processes through Imbolc lunar receptivity and summer solstice solar consciousness, to autumn equinox integration. The transformation of lunar, solar, and mercurial aspects operates as both subject matter and creative methodology. Paintings emerge from non-knowing through automatic processes, develop through receptive consciousness, gain form through solar shaping, and integrate through considered micro-decisions. Part of the work involves reconfiguring alchemy through a contemporary feminist lens, developing a feminist understanding of transformation beyond classical models.

Fields of Thought

Theoretical approaches support conceptualisation and articulation of the practice, drawing from painting theory, alchemy, psychoanalysis, and network theory. Painting operates as a method of generating knowledge through material processes. Psychoanalytic theory provides understanding of psychic transformation. Feminist approaches critique traditional models of subjectivity and creative practice. Network theory positions the work within contemporary technological and relational contexts.

Practice

The constellated form emerges from both unconscious creative processes and countless conscious micro-decisions. Drawing on network structures, this approach enables artworks to be understood as comprising multiple interconnected elements rather than singular objects. The eleven elements represent ways of articulating the psychic, material, and creative terrain of the practice, functioning as organising principles that invite return, reconfiguration, and ongoing relationship.

Application in Practice

This methodology allows individual artworks to be understood as complex networks distributed across multiple forms and temporalities. A constellation might comprise paintings exhibited in a gallery alongside seasonal ritual documentation, plant cultivation records, dream fragments, and theoretical texts: each element essential to the work's complete expression. Some elements remain private or ephemeral; others become publicly accessible through exhibition, publication, or performance.

Working with emergent processes across extended periods of development, the form maintains openness to transformation and reconfiguration while providing structure for sustained creative inquiry.