this is how it feels...

Early this morning, as every morning for the last days and beyond, I was sitting yet again in my makeshift “studio” space trying to work - make something out of the mess inside my brain. Water paints, graphite, brushes, pencils, sketchbooks, ink. Twirls and tearings of scrap and good paper. All damaged now The entrails of my endeavours… The guddle on my table was no kinder to my crazed head state. Water and paint then soluble graphite marking? Or soluble graphite lines etched into the untouched white before adding colour? I feel there is something there to chase. But I can’t catch hold of this illusory creature that is gone before I can make focus and name it. Whispering out of sight and sniggering. Slipping away, sidling off. I am a feart beast caught in a snare. Tormented as thoughts constrain and cut in… But this is just messing about with paper and paint, isn’t it? It’s not life or death or anything. And it’s not a piece that anyone would be i...

exhibition at The Whitehouse Gallery Kirkcudbright (finishes this Friday, 28th February) Lots of things happen when paintings are taken out of my studio and are shown to the world (even if it’s only a very tiny bit of it). Most of it too has very little to do with whether they are sold or not. This is maybe surprising as there would seem to be a direct relationship and a purpose to hanging the work on a gallery wall with a price ticket on it and then someone handing over money for it. (Though satisfying that can be) I think it has more to do with how it makes me feel about my work and about myself as the artist. When I am working away from day to day with familiar mess, paints, tools, boards and sketchbooks around me, the paintings are absolutely an extension of me. I strive to make my emotions, memories, thoughts and impressions visually available. It can take a long time - days, months…. Never? Finally I seem to find some kind of resolution. I draw breath and leave ...

Change happens and I can’t ever predict what it might be. One day just before Christmas as things were calming down a bit in my studio and I was mulling over what I should do next, I received a phone call from Lynne at The Whitehouse Gallery in Kirkcudbright. Would I like to show some of my work there for a week in February? Well, yes. This popular, contemporary gallery is a smart, light space with a reputation for exhibiting quality art and crafts and I hadn’t ever shown my work there before. I didn’t expect they would ever show my paintings there. I don’t have a great story to tell of commercial galleries and my success. I don’t seem to make the kind of work that sits well in a crowded space of disparate work. My paintings seem to fair better when hung side-by-side, with as much or as little space around them as they need to communicate their collective story without interference. My husband says that it is then that they can sing to each other. Happily Lynne gets t...

It was raining all night. I know because it was lashing on the skylight windows of my bedroom. Cosy and comforted, it reminds me always of childhood. It’s the same sweet recall when I open the window wide to watch for the geese and feel the chilly blast of the wind on my face while I am cocooned in warmth. It’s only a short walk from the cottage to the WWT site and there’s not much traffic in the lane. I am accompanied all along with birds rustling and calling in the hedgerows and the near constant background “Goose Music”. (Aldo Leopold’s essay from Round River). Then I see them. Black, silvery grey and white wonders beside me in the field. There are puddles all along the roadside and I take a diversion at every one. Why would I risk getting my feet wet? I wander along the main avenue of the site. Wind is picking up. Rain can’t be far away again. The feeling is joyous but still I make a zig zag route around so many large muddy puddles. But I have wellies on here, ...

More and more paint. Mark and mark again. What else? Always, especially when I feel there is a resolution approaching, I will turn the piece I’m working on round - 90 degrees, then another until I’m back where it started. I’m looking for something better than I’ve got already. And this is what happened this time. Suddenly it all made sense. A quarter turn and I sighed. More work to do but...yes. (detail) A bit more paint. And a scratch here and there… It feels a bit odd to sum up what I do in so few words… “Well I put on the paint with a few tools and mark into it a bit until it is finished” It can take me days, weeks, (months?)... Sometimes I experience a freedom and lightness. Most often it is intense. It is abstract and I feel like my head is turned outside in trying to reach that itch. And still I love it. The newness of every single painting I make. And then the fighting with it. And myself. Chasing whatever it is. My artistic world is currently ...

Book reading and a word pops out. I write it down in my notebook of interesting words. Another remembered word floats up and then a phrase, sighing inside me. Scratchings of old familiar language and place. A song perhaps? I find it, listen to it. Memories and feelings and heady exploration. Another idea for a title of a painting is there. This time the book is “The Old Ways” by Robert Macfarlane. The word is swathed. The remembered word is “happed” - Scots for wrapped up, enfolded or clothed. The song is “Happed in Mist” by Michael Marra. The title for the painting is “sky happit”. I expect that one day soon I will make it just as a few years ago I made “path from wanchancy"

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...

Now I'm launching myself off the precipice with hopeful intent - no free fall with terror this time. The studio awaits, seemingly also keen to get started on a new adventure... Where will I begin? I survey the space. Mmmm - there's a devilishly alluring gathering of rusty metal shards on the table. Some printing with them onto a variety of papers and cloth would be a fruitful use of time, I think. Ahhh - my attention is drawn to the group of encaustic bowls I was experimenting with. To make another would be a pleasing rhythmical activity, curved layers of paper and wax combining into a satisfying just right for cupping-in-the-hand structure. Ooh - but there is my collection of seen-better-days wooden boxes. Part of me can't wait to start transforming them into the still mysterious project I have named "Box". But not yet. Choice can be like change sometimes - excitingly attractive but potentially ever so scary too. What if I choose the wrong thi...

Depression and anxiety have been daemon accomplices breathing in tandem with me. They translate their warped view of reality into my subjective experience, silencing my anguished cries, leaving me feeling powerless to act. My work pattern has been dictated by the rhythms of my daemons; they rage rabidly and I am left fearfully paralysed seeking shelter; their bad-wolf snarling calms unexpectedly and I might try to express some emotion, to expunge the voices with some creative endeavour before the fury starts again. And so it has been for so long. But with seasons turning and with much time given from those who care about me, there are changes. I know how lucky I am. These days I try not to heed the harrowing whisperings. I work more often to my own rhythms. New ideas for finished pieces are emerging. I detect new flows. And that is hopeful. More than that it is tentatively exhilarating... and I breathe.

Clearing space is a much under glorified way of spending time. There is an obvious usefulness in the activity of course, creating tidy, uncluttered areas in which to work without the distraction of too much muddling stuff. But that’s expected. Almost without fail whilst a-sorting, I will find a vital mislaid scraping tool or fabulously marked paper fragment that might enhance the next piece I make. Fortuitous but not life changing. This time though, this super deep clean of my studio left me feeling elated. Unburdened. The act of destroying my work was not some frenzied attack of self-loathing. (I know too well when that is the deal.) This was mindful purpose. I had created these pieces. I discovered, explored and honed skills. I developed narratives, questioned and challenged myself. All that could not be destroyed just by the act of cutting up, by removing the work from being. It is not lost - I absorbed it all both good and bad. I made the commitment to progress ...

What does an artist do when unsold work starts to dominate the studio? If they were newer encaustic pieces then I might scrape the wax surface back and start again on the wooden panels. But this work predates all my encaustic explorations. Numerous highly textured canvasses, some bubble-wrapped, stacked under tables, racked against diminishing wall space and taking up shelves threaten to stifle and ensnare me by their very presence. Somehow they don’t even seem relevant to what I do now, so immersed I feel now with my encaustic work. Would I want to put them on show and say this is what I make? A craft knife rests on the edge of the table... I thought I had tidied my tools away. Just one then to see how it feels... I look down at the floor. It definitely needs sweeping again. A mound of torn, mangled canvas with wrangled staples and threads lies there. I carry three stretcher frames across the floor. I know someone who will use these. This is good and getting easier. ...

I would finish the piece I was working on then I would have a bit of a tidy up in readiness for all the new stuff I was planning to do. That was the plan. Space. I needed more space. The necessary clutter of work in progress is at once comforting and restrictive. I am oblivious as time passes and chaos creeps in like silken tendrils, first to caress reassuringly ( I am in my lovely studio, after all with my making treasures abounding), then to smother as I search with feverish frustration for that very particular paper, cloth or scraping tool amongst the mounting detritus of all that creative doing. So to do a bit of sorting and reorganising is refreshingly restorative. Open the windows, turn the music up loud. Time to breathe and get moving. Tables scraped and cleared. Tools cleaned and rehoused. Paints back in box. Painty rags pinned to wall for future possibilities. Papers, fibres and threads dealt into ordered bundles. Floor swept (stopping only occasionally to wo...

In the first days of the millennium, my oldest daughter had a stroke when she was just sixteen. Six months later, after learning to talk and walk again and use her non dominant left hand for everything, her consultant said that the best we could hope for now was "adaptation". Brain repair as such was as good as could be expected and learning to live with it was the only likely option. Adaptation rang hollowly then. Adaptation was no more than a consolation prize. Adaptation was the badge of honour on childhood sport's days proclaiming: "Well done for taking part!" when everyone knew you just weren't a very good runner. I thought that it seemed such a small offering then, some amorphous invitation to embrace change in the wake of what had rampaged and dashed. But this is not really about my daughter, though her story is monumental and complicated. Rather, with the passing of so much time and life, I reflect and view adaptation instead, as o...

I have been away from a good place for so long. Now as I make amends and try to reconnect, I find that I have brought my fear into my studio. The result is that tentative efforts to work have been woefully far from the free and expressive place that I remembered could fire and consume me. I try too hard, forcing minute concentrations of detail into a twisted tight fist of constraint and control. This is not working and this is not helping. Me. To be free and unselfconscious is the thing. And so today, with graphite blocks and paper of different weight and texture and with anxious brain ignored, I managed to begin again. Let go and make marks. Graphite on paper. Graphite on grainy paper. And wondrously (how could I have forgotten?), graphite on beautiful, old coarse linen. Now I think I might just be able to carry on.

"Flourish" is about letting go, allowing growth and not hiding from the world. I want it to say: "This is who I am, I'm going to fly and I am not apologising!" It taps right back into my concept of "Acceptable Flesh". (See " Not Whining But Screaming ") Oh for all of us to feel nurtured, nourished and valued unconditionally irrespective of our physical or monetary status! I suppose it is more the way I want to feel than how I am most days. Exuberantly aspirational... " When I think about how I made this piece it seems like I threw everything at it; highly textured painted canvas, fragments of polychromatic silkscreen printed calico, constructed silk fibres, dyed mulberry bark, mixed threads. And it's red, shoutingly RED! Because it had to seem bold and unapologetically blooming. Exuberantly alive. To view more of this artwork, see it on my website here: http://www.maggieayres.co.uk/gallery/flourish.htm

It's been a long,cold winter. At last I take a real look outside and see that the sun has come up again, just as it did on the morning of the 21st December the morning of the shortest day of the year the morning of the lunar eclipse the morning when my father passed away and was at peace at last. Now parentless, I feel exposed and vulnerable like never before. Yet even more sure that I carry on and really live this life. ...still craving my parents approval... ...and the sun will rise again tomorrow.

I had forgotten what it felt like to have a space entirely for me, without reference to my lovely family. Joyous. Thrilling. Intoxicating. My virgin studio has two generously large Georgian windows- the light gloriously sublime, reflecting possibilities around the high, white walls and ceiling. It begs me for expansive, bold canvases to honour its space and begin its legend. The floor is bare board and ready to be spilled and spattered upon. Oh the sense of excitement and liberation! Here lies the scene of my new agenda- my expression of self and the abandonment of apology for being less than. It feels like I've been waiting all my life for this heady time, where my story can be rewritten, defined anew by the very existence of a studio of my own. Joyous. Thrilling. Intoxicating.

It could be deduced from my last post, that my erstwhile screaming induced a subsequent tide of family trauma and illness in which I lost my voice. I hadn't yet got into the blogging habit, and so sharing here was not foremost in my thoughts. With large sighs of relief, big enough to fill a sky-soaring hot air balloon, complete with human cargo and accompanying paraphernalia, family life is settling down and better health is trickling through. September is here and I am transfixed, misty eyed with mellow fruitfulness as I contemplate the slow calming of the seasons while the year begins to wind down. In contrast, for me Autumn has always meant a time of fresh beginnings, renewed intentions and the drive for change. However, a year ago I was propelled into limbo when my mother died. She was 89 and had lived with dementia for many years. I thought all was for the worst and no hope would enter here. But 12 months on, with a slow passing of familial stresses to some haphazard emo...