Journal

A few days after telling friends that I routinely burned my journals in my teens and 20s, I came across one digital years’ worth of entries. It was 2005; a time when I didn’t know much about life, let alone myself. There were two deaths, a job change, articles I’d written for mainstream media, reflections on an unhealthy relationship, lots of photography and even more music.

I don’t journal with words now - I sketch, make prints, paint. I’ll share some visual journal snippets here of my slow progress in making things without a lens.

Sketchbook - seaweed cyanotype

Mikyoung and Magda

Solstice prints

Painting with lip tint and coffee by the sea

My garden, 2024

All the seasons from 2024.

Wet and wild

Somehow it is April and I’ve been busy working on 3 shows. This year I’ve been up and down to Sheffield a couple of times (thank you Fronteer gallery for including my kale lumen in Tiny Plants - it’s now off to Photofusion), the Dulwich Heritage Cheese Gallery have been wonderful (and I’m taking part in a ‘meet the artist’ afternoon coming up soon), I’ve walked through wild winds and mud with small people for miles (hurray for their energy and love of the outdoors), and I’ve enjoyed exquisite exhibitions. My creative journal is slowly filling up and I’m well stocked in expired photographic paper. The solstice solargraph was a dissapointment but you can’t win them all.

Kings Cross

Polaroid, Saul Leiter show

Solstice Solargraph

Tidesdale, early morning

Green house

Cold morning

Brixton

Lumen

Kale Lumen

Mum and bay leaves

SLG meeting

2023

Bits of 2023. I didn’t practice nearly enough. Almost every roll was a failure (I left a few out on a hot ledge by mistake, bought too many handmade rolls, used mostly broken cameras), but I’m alright with it because things were not really clicking into place. I paid more attention to my new greenhouse, built in the summer. The greenhouse was perfect for making lumens once I had enough ledge space.

I accidentally took a pinhole on a trip with some friends, which resulted in a roll of 20-odd exposures that I love. Albiet, none of that trip came out well. I picked up my polaroid 600 again. It’s an early model with no ability to turn off the flash. My broken cameras might be too far gone now, though I still like this little broken 32mm which doesn’t have a lens cap.

I exhibited a couple of times, and stayed mostly on the outside of my little artist communities - one is active, the other is a lot less. Maybe it’s the age that my daughters are at; they need every moment of me that is available to them. I don’t need to be out there, busy and doing shows all the time. The tail end of December gifted me a lot of perspective.

Follow links for 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016,  2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009.

Daughters in Hastings, pinhole.

Greenhouse in autumn, pinhole.

N in the park, pinhole

N in Wales, 35mm. Broken camera.

Brixton

C&D’s house

Somewhere in Sussex, broken lens.

Grass lumen

Kale lumen, exposed over 3 weeks.

My garden.

Greenhouse, summer.

Greenhouse autumn, broken lens.

Broken camera, 35mm.

Home.

Dulwich, 35mm.

J&D

Pops, Nottingham

Croydon.

With Emily.

John in Brixton, polaroid.

Me, polaroid.

A Saturday in December

Recent. Oct '23

Things are rapidly changing.

Recent. Aug '23

Windows and Thresholds

Bell House will be hosting a new exhibition during the Dulwich Festival Artists’ Open House. Over 40 artists - painters, printmakers, sculptors, filmmakers and photographers - explore the theme of Windows and Thresholds in a series of five exhibitions in Bell House.  With a nod to the new Berthe Morisot show at Dulwich Picture Gallery, Windows and Thresholds considers whether these are barriers symbolic of separation and division or portals of opportunity. Looking inwards and outwards a group of female curators  each take a room and invite us to cross over into their worlds.

I am so happy to be involved in one of the Bell House rooms, curated by Ky Lewis

Photopolymer, Ashdown forest

Photopolymer, Ashdown Forest