Artists Statement
My life, and therefore my work, is a secular pilgrimage. The way that I know where I’m going is to find objects, then put the objects in specific places, juxtaposed with something else, and then a picture will emerge.
The objects are clues or familiars, like those of a shaman or a witch. Witches have their familiars, shamans have their rituals and when I go and find things in the street or in the house, the beach, wherever, that’s my ritual. And the prayer is the actual process of putting them together, that’s when I cage them, and the iconographic nature of my work is the cage that holds the clues together.
I think I’m guided by whoever is with me, my ancestors or whatever, in the end I don’t know. I know something is being channelled through me, I am only a vessel, and I don’t know what I’m doing until it’s materialized. The process is exhilarating and frustrating and I’m in something like a trance until it’s finished.
As well as finding objects I’m recycling them and giving them new meaning. They’re not dead, like our ancestors are not dead, it’s just that their energy is transformed and I feel I’m tapping into their wisdoms. When I go to find my clues or familiars, synchronicity plays a part, I go blindly to the place where they take me. Then I look back and I know what the journey, or pilgrimage, was telling me.
The whole of my work is my journey to fulfilment.
The objects are clues or familiars, like those of a shaman or a witch. Witches have their familiars, shamans have their rituals and when I go and find things in the street or in the house, the beach, wherever, that’s my ritual. And the prayer is the actual process of putting them together, that’s when I cage them, and the iconographic nature of my work is the cage that holds the clues together.
I think I’m guided by whoever is with me, my ancestors or whatever, in the end I don’t know. I know something is being channelled through me, I am only a vessel, and I don’t know what I’m doing until it’s materialized. The process is exhilarating and frustrating and I’m in something like a trance until it’s finished.
As well as finding objects I’m recycling them and giving them new meaning. They’re not dead, like our ancestors are not dead, it’s just that their energy is transformed and I feel I’m tapping into their wisdoms. When I go to find my clues or familiars, synchronicity plays a part, I go blindly to the place where they take me. Then I look back and I know what the journey, or pilgrimage, was telling me.
The whole of my work is my journey to fulfilment.