Circumstance Return to the UK with husbands new job and third child. Establishing a family home in Staffordshire with no network, community or external support.
Method Collages sourced from fashion and interiors magazines — aspirational domestic imagery, female figures, architectural structures. Acrylic paintings developed from collages, layering paints until the figures became something other than their source. Working alone in a spare room while the new baby slept or fed.
Materials Fashion and interiors magazines. Acrylic on canvas.
Collaborators The aspirational imagery itself — working with and against the visual language of domestic safety and female aspiration. The subconscious, surfacing what could not yet be consciously named.
Reflection The figures that emerged carried a stare — direct, unsettled, looking outward. When exhibited in a local coffee shop in Leek, viewers found the gaze uncomfortable, not something they could live with. An open evening event with local artists around the exhibition began to build a new network of artists and started conversations that would lead to much more.
Learning The subconscious is a collaborator. Working with and against cultural imagery produces knowledge that direct expression cannot reach. Sharing work publicly — however informally — is not separate from the practice. It is how the next phase begins.
FERAL STATE 