this is how it feels...

Here you find me on the threshold of a whole new body of work that has been scratching at my bones for so long.  All the while I have fairly delved with some pioneer spirit into painting with melted beeswax, resin and oil paint, destroyed so many old pieces that no longer served me and played with rust printing on paper and fabric and stitched the same.  At the same time a growing pile of boxes in various states of vintage and disrepair has been occupying my studio. If you've ever visited me there and noticed, you might have considered the pile just another aspect of general studio storage clutter. Inquiries as to their meaning have usually been answered with mutterings of a new arcane project, in planning, but not actually doing it yet... I write copious notes, look at old photographs, make drawings, read and read and find references to ...well ...everything really. Somehow it all seems relevant. This work is the BIG thing that I feel I have been revving up to since I started...

On any given day, I can cross the road in front of our house and travel by bus for ten miles or so to my studio, located in the small fishing town of Kirkcudbright, here in South West Scotland. The journey is predictably and reassuringly familiar, promising a non-judgemental welcome as my square key turns in the lock and reveals ever present delights within. Here I am. Breathe internal calming sigh. Light, smells, materials demanding touching. Work still in progress from last encounters. Potential. I work in various states of chaos.  Then I declare there is no space and there must ensue ordering, sorting, rebuilding of rust-printed paper piles, sweeping and rearranging. Reasoned activity offers fresh breathing rhythms.  There will be time to catch ideas and help them settle before the muddling happens again. And then there’s my chair to cocoon me offering yet more time - “to sleep, perchance to dream”. And I do sleep sometimes - delicious permitted opportunism for afternoon na...