Odyssey (2023)

This work is the culmination of my emotional and physical journey during 2023. Initially undertaken to process my emotions and seek meaning from within, it rests on physical movement as my way to navigate transition and change. I no longer have the words to describe my world, but speak with visual metaphor and storytelling in an attempt to process and transform my emotional landscape from chaos to beauty.

 

The process of making was labourious and time-consuming, echoing the difficulties I was having processing grief and change. I draw, photograph and 'experience' life. I cut work up and start again. I revisit and revise old prints into new stories through collage and instinct. Working with cyanotypes, screenprints and sunlight, I delight in the random results the sun and chemicals can produce. I then overwork the sunprints with paint, pen and ink to discover and refine the story that peeks out.

 

Odyssey is the story of 'me', remaking myself on a Journey through the floodwaters along the Murray River across NSW, VIC and SA. Water is a powerful symbol of emotion for me and the artworks an attempt to capture and describe my feelings as I created space for a new chapter of my life. The works explore my emotional landscape as I navigated moving home, the death of a loved one, the ongoing illness and surgery of my son and an attempt to soothe a deep yearning to find space for myself to exist in my own right, as my own person, rather than as an adjunct to other people’s needs.