this is how it feels...

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...

Whether the next project is boxes, bowls or as yet half formed ideas for something yet unspoken, each requires a bit more imagining, free-form exploring, sketchbook developing and journal musing before I actually feel I am committed to a new body of work. In a way this is quite a novel way of working for me. Leaping in and seeing what happens is more my style in the studio but in the current spirit of change, I’ve been feeling the need to act like a “proper artist” and do a bit more exploratory preparation so I can at least pretend that I know what I am doing. I have started doing a bit of experimenting with encaustic monoprinting, using a makeshift system of baking sheet heated over an electric hotplate as my printing bed. Here I make marks with encaustic wax pigment bars melting unctuously directly on to the tray before laying down paper on top to make the print. It is a mesmerising and compulsive activity and indeed much paper and wax is used in just observing obsessively as the...

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...

A change of name then... things don’t stay the same. That’s all.

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.

Last weekend was the mighty open studio extravaganza in this corner of Scotland which is Spring Fling . Ninety-three artists and makers across our region opened their studio doors to welcome in the interested and curious public. There was an enormous amount of preparation to get my studio and all the work ready and a level of exciting adrenalin-fuelled panic that far surpassed rational sanity. The doors opened while the final signage was still being tied into place on Saturday morning at 10.30am and the fun began. Even though I have taken part in several Spring Flings by now, I was still surprised when nigh on nine hundred visitors came to my studio over three days. They smiled, looked bemused, chatted, asked very pertinent and informed questions, and explained how my painting based on feelings of loss of self, resembled a dolphin cavorting in the waves. Some managed to control the urge to reach out and touch textured surfaces and some did not even try, caressing the surprisi...

Last weekend marked the start of my new season of studio workshops . The Creative Process is one I'd offered several times before so it had been prepared and tweaked and honed and previously very well received. I had notes and inspirational book of quotes to hand. I had taken hours to tidy and prepare the studio for my visitors. Everything was in place: boxes and baskets of myriad fibres; fabric and threads to inspire; stacks of papers for drawing and printing; jars full of brushes; old yoghurt pots for decanting gesso, glue and paint. Canvases were sitting ready in the corner awaiting their first tentative markings. In the kitchen downstairs, a tasty, nourishing lunch awaited. Hot and cold refreshments were laid out in anticipation of workers needing to be comfortingly restored with the additional aid of shortbread and juicy grapes. The scene was indeed well and truly set. And I was nervous, really stomach quiveringly nervous just as I always am before a workshop begins...

"It's a Maggie line!" - shorthand instigated by my husband Kim, describing my obsessive preference for bendy, non-parallel soaring and sinuous lines usually observed in nature and enthusiastically photographed for future enterprises. Tree branches entwining skywards. Markings and rivulets left behind on lowtide beaches. Strata of stone layers on exposed rock formations. Random discoveries of tumbled pebbles. Twisted gnarled water-seeking roots revealed. Creases in the land where hills enfold fields. Crackings on mountainsides as water takes its course. And with the last snow and drifting of a couple of weeks or so ago, we saw the achingly stunning white folds and billows, creating yet more "Maggie lines" to wonder at. A joyful beholding of a sympathetic landscape. Here are just a small sample. Feel free to click on the images for larger versions

Nothing unusual in unlocking the door to my studio, except now I am forced to see it with the prospect of visitors walking around, taking notice of what's on display, being able to stand back for optimum appreciation. So now I have to transform my space and remove most of the evidence of my everyday working abandonment. When I work I am messy, careless and immediate. I allow no time for the tidy replacing of tools and materials. This in itself would be a fine illustration and conceivably quite sociologically of interest to those who would favour the artist in their natural habitat, but issues of health and safety must take their toll and force me to clean up my act. So it is a necessity to tidy away and order my accoutrements at least just enough to allow for the visitor to walk through the door and not immediately stumble over unfinished canvases, slide on dropped pastels and become entangled and immobilised by windings of thread and fibre. It's a tricky balance to achie...

In my last post I spoke a bit about the themes which drive my work. I realise these have been less explicit of late than when I started out with my blog. I think it is about time that I revisited them, not least for my own benefit. Over the last couple of years these themes have been no less important to me, but have influenced as a gently embracing undercurrent rather than as a forceful driving energy. I recognise I lose sight of the bigger picture so often and need to take time to re-evaluate and remember. When I started writing this blog I was motivated by a passion to communicate the meaning behind my abstract work. "Acceptable Flesh" as a concept was the focus I needed to make a body of work which I planned to exhibit as an immersive experience and as such, an entity in itself. In reality, every piece I make mines the same seam of inspiration. "Acceptable Flesh" is primarily about my struggle to deal with my socially unacceptable body. I have neither b...