Daily capture..

'Daily Capture' workshop with Clare Thornton at Coleg Sir Gar introduced the notion of 'turning up the dial on the everyday' through a daily ritual of collecting information.This information could come in any form; a photograph, a written diary, a drawing or a collected object. We were sent off to find 'a static surface' and 'a moment in time'. We were given a pile of everyday materials, cling film, hazard tape, ribbon. I took the foil. Walking around the art college, going from the toilets to the coffee shop all felt pretty nostalgic for me so I decided to use the foil to take an impression of the walls. I started to enjoy the pressure of my body against the wall, feeling into the wall like an old friend, like contact improvisation. I would like to try this on a much bigger scale, and get other artists or an audience to try it too. 

When we brought our materials back 20 minutes later we had to consider how we might turn what we had into an installation 'as if you were having an open studios tonight'.We scaled up photographs and enlarged drawings in ribbon across the space. It was great to collaborate and to make an installation in just 20 minutes.       

Seeing red... ( and blue)

..the serendipity of sightseeing, drifting through my own neighbourhood in Llandysul and Pontweli. 

I went out with a blue and red marker pen and a book of marker paper under my arm with a view to draw en plein air, referring back to an art school exercise, using only two colours to create perspective and depth. After drawing several street intersections from the bypass flyover I wondered into the Jones & Davies (Fruit) ltd. yard to discover the wonderfully sculptural pallet stacks, resplendent in blue and red. perhaps it was the phenomenon of perceptual vigilance, of noticing the red and blue because I had those coloured pens in my pocket, but the precariously leaning towers offered an intriguing challenge. I shouldn't have been so surprised a week later when I found they had all been re-organised. I was attached to the snapshot in my mind and forgot that these pallets are used to carry fruit and veg around the country, evidenced by a solitary cabbage leaf on the ground. This is when I began a regular routine of visiting and documenting the shifting sands of my new site, a drawing in many stages over time.           

Stage in a drawing made later away from the site. pencil, ink and white emulsion.

First drawing trip with marker pens.