As a full time artist I am used to work to deadlines: exhibitions, orders for gallery stores, commissions, closing dates – the list is long… These times can get intense and very (very!) busy. This is my job. But they are generally followed by periods of less intense work – this is when I charge my batteries, its the time that I can reflect on my work and it is also when I allow myself to play and explore by spending time in my studio without the expectation to create a finished piece of art, but focusing on the processes and having fun. Over the last couple of weeks I have used this ‘spare’ time to re-discover natural processes I came across when I studied; rusting fabrics in different ways, mono printing, hapa zome (flower beating) and simple hand stitching building up layers of marks on fabrics. This included foraging for leaves, sticks and other objects on my daily walk through the bush, collecting sea water at the beach and roaming around the farm in search for rusty objects.

I totally enjoy the different processes, combining techniques and responding through simple stitch marks.