Ribbons in the Wind

Sparks of a fire kindled in childhood were to smoulder and ignite a passion. The extraordinary emotions felt poring over a book of Andrew Wyeth paintings; of precious peaceful moments reading two volumes of haiku poetry: two books I later breathlessly rediscovered in a university library; poetry taught as handwriting practice in my tiny rural primary school. It was the lyrics of Joni Mitchell, and Paul Simon tumbling from the record player... melancholy magical realism ruminating in the stories of Berger, Marquez, Steinbeck... It was taking my bike and a sketch book out along the wild cliffs and figuring out who was emerging from a chrysalis... It was photography as 35mm and medium format film cameras. It was waiting in excited anticipation to see the images. It was darkrooms, developing, burning, dodging, blinking in the piercing daylight.

The great master photographers, Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier Bresson, Dorathea Lange, Walker Evans, Edward Wesson... all saw, recorded and preserved the moments I held in my hands, caught in the dusty book from my Grandparents basement. I cushion it amongst new Macy's t-shirts, a fish-eye lens bargained for somewhere in the busy streets of Chinatown; and words from my grandfather: subject, composition, timing; his hand gently shaking on my shoulder as he talks, body memory of war and terror. I carried them with my suitcase back home to England.

Wet winter's day in St Ives, Christmas a fresh memory. Monochrome reflections of the cracks in the grey sky upon the slippery cobbled streets. Mum and papa take me to buy a camera lens. My brothers immortalised in the silver particles, echoing the drops of rain. That moment was now. Now, this is then.

I stoked the embers, learned the crafts and applied my art in the physical processes. I engaged with time, captured and froze it; gaining a First class BA Honours Degree in Visual Arts and World History, a Masters Degree in Contemporary Visual Arts, and a gathering of experiences to see my work into international exhibitions and collections. I struggled though, to weave the threads of thought together, in a vacuum of floating warp and weft. The shortcomings of a language that cannot express a feeling it does not collectively feel, became apparent as I tried to understand who I am and what I am expressing in my artwork. Yet one culture had two small words to describe what was intangible, and that one concept, not wholly translatable, because it is an understanding, a feeling, a knowing; is what in Japan is described as Wabi Sabi. So small, so simple, and the connections became visible, and with that, a freedom to weave the tapestry of my oeuvre, no longer floating like disconnected ribbons in the wind.