The Unearthing of Words

I find solace in music. I find a lot of things in music—but throughout this year, it’s given me a place to go and a place to feel something other than the despair and frustration that has been sitting at the edges of everything, threatening to take over. The works in this exhibition are a response to, and an exploration of, music. When you unearth a powerful new sound or hear a voice that reaches right down into your soul, it can transform your life and lift you up. Music can give a beautiful freedom, especially at a time when we have felt so restricted.

When I hear music, I take it in—I hold it in my body, I absorb it into my being—and I release it through my hands onto the paper. The movement drives the work into something else. Another realm perhaps. When I listen to a beautiful piece of music, it opens up into a field or forest before me. It is here that I find stories and connections that weave their way into my mind and then out through my hands onto the paper.

I’m so at home in these places.

I have always loved the idea of unearthing things, much like an archaeologist. Of bringing things that were once hidden from all into the light. My works are a bringing to light of something the eye has not seen. I dig them up from the depths of my heart and soul and give them light so others can see it too. Music helps me to do this. Words are unearthed when music pierces the depths of my being, and is released through my body, through my hands, onto the paper with paint and ink.

I’ve always found drawing to be a kind of dance with the paper.

In some ways, it’s been hard to create throughout this year, but in other ways it’s been the only thing that has made sense. Through all periods of my life I have painted; I have drawn, I have written words and made work. I have written on any surface I can find when I have run out of paper. My studio walls are littered with scrawled words which look like a jumbled mess, but each word has a purpose. Sometimes a few written words can be an entire story in my mind. It’s a compulsion that I’ve always had—sometimes no more a thought than breathing, but just as necessary.

The work and the words always find a way to come out.