Saturday 30 November 2013

Saturday 30th November 2013

I'll be showing some of my recent work in the Foyer Gallery at Letchworth Arts Centre in December.  Here's a bit about it.  (And here's a photograph of some of the original face pictures with beautiful god daughter Miriam.)




"Following a sequential project in 2012 for which I made a book for every day of the year,  I decided to make a picture of a face for every day of 2013.  I started with no rules except that there would be a face for every day of the year.  Sometimes I make two or three in one day, sometimes none.  They are numbered but not dated.  I have 75 more to make by the 31st December and I will be adding them here as I make them.  Eventually they too will be photographed, reduced in size and displayed in the last of the five frames exhibited here.

When drawing the faces, I try to allow myself the freedom to draw like a child, without over considering what the drawing is meant to portray.  After I have drawn them I put them up on my studio walls.  As with the books that I made last year, the faces I make respond to the faces I have made before.  There are some faces that I notice keep recurring.  Some of them I recognize as people who have been important in my life.  Some are drawings from life or photographs, often of my daughters.  Others are simply created as I go along, starting with an eye and seeing what happens.

Amongst other things the faces allow me to explore ‘girlhood’, celebrate it, and acknowledge its loss as part of my every day life.  My youngest daughter is grown up; drawing the faces helps me to acknowledge the part of me that misses having a ‘little girl’ to be a mother to and the part of me that doesn’t know quite when it happened that I stopped having the open, potent, faithful belief in myself as having the possibility to live the life of any number of young heroines from fairy tales, novels, films and magazines.

Inspired by a quilt that was made by my great great great great grandmother, Anna Margaretta Brereton, which I saw for the first time this year, I decided to reproduce the faces in  patchwork grids for the purpose of this exhibition.

I find that the simple rule of making something for every day releases me to work in an exploratory way whilst keeping one thread of certainty running through."