Prior to embarking on the MA I had attended a number of courses at West Dean College, both as part of my Foundation Diploma and outside of that. I noticed a summer school course titled 'Drawing from the Land: Walking, Being, Imagining' with a particularly lovely tutor called Caroline Wendling who has done a number of site specific pieces, used to run a print studio and with whom I get on very well. The course description opens with this quote: 'To develop a sense of place requires that one knows the place intimately and reacts to it emotionally’ Yi-Fu Tuan, 1977. It seemed like fate, I had to book it! The course embraces the idea of 'in-situ' expression and we will be based in a simple rectangular building out in the estate, walking every day and repsonding to the landscape. I feel I know West Dean well, but haven't explored that much of the wider estate so I thought this would be a perfect start expanding my practice into other places after the MA. There will be archives to visit and a talk from the collections manager and archivist which are aimed at encouraging us to open up ideas for our own mapping of the land.
My plan after the MA is to pause, enjoy the summer with my family and feel free to do any artistic bits and pieces I can squeeze in without putting too much pressure on myself. I need to complete the print I started with Chris Orr before the summer holiday but I'll have 3 weeks after the show before the children break up so that will be a nive project to focus on. I naturally conform to an academic year due to the children so feel like I can take a pause over the summer without any danger of losing momentum. In fact, a pause happens naturally so actually being more mindful about it feels like rather a treat! The West Dean course is midway through August so I think I'll be feeling recharged and raring to go by then. We're away on our family holiday the following week so I think the timing is perfect - I'll have had my selfish week away immersed in art and be able to concentrate on the family while I mull over all the things I've learned at the same time, ready to dive straight back into it in early September when school restarts.
I've been soley focussing on the Swinley Forest for the duration of the MA and feel like I have begun to understand how to conduct research both in the forest and from other sources to broaden my understanding of the wider context of the work. I would like to begin to make meaningful work exploring other places that I feel connected to. The Norfolk coast is the first place that springs to mind, but in time the West coast of Scotland, where I lived and met my husband and Yorkshire, where my Dad's family is from are other places that hold meaning for me. Starting in early 2025 I plan on spending some weekends away in Norfolk immersing myself in the places and walks I know best at different times of year, charting how it changes and making work while I'm there as well as bringing ideas and sketches back home to continue to work on. I'll think of the trips as little residencies. We go several times a year as a family but mainly between Easter - October so I want to experience it over the winter months and outside of the usual bank holiday weekends when I usually experience it.
I think the week in West Dean will be a really wonderfully immersive experience and really interesting to explore another 'place' in a really supported way, almost a way of testing what it's like to make work about somewhere else on a very small scale. I plan on brushing up on some 'place' reading before I go but not doing any specific research about the West Dean estate itself as I want to immerse myself in the archive when I'm there. There is no press available to us but we will be monoprinting by hand so I thought I might take my mini press and some small perspex plates and take advantage of the ink thats available. I feel really excited about this as a little peek over the parapet into another place! I want to spend some time in the library at West Dean while I'm there and really make the most of my time there. It almost feel like coming full circle since it was Caroline who wrote my reference for the MA and introduced me to the idea of place based works through her own practice.
I plan on continuing my experimental approach to printmaking. I don't think this is really a conscious choice that I make, it's just the way I work. I get very excited by the different marks that are possible with different techniques. I tend to collect new techniques as and when they appear, so the growth feels quite natural to me. I know I want something to look a certain way so I seek out a way of making that happen, or someone mentions a new way of doing something and it excites me so I want to try it. I want to continue to work in this way, learning in a natural way with the end result I'm after driving the process and the explorations of technique. I particularly enjoy the way learning something in one technique opens up possibilities to me in other techniques. I feel very comfortable with the reduction linocut method, I think I could push this by using multiple plates and adding different techniques to linocut to explore new aesthetics and really start thinking about the layers of human demands put on the forest which is echoed in the Norfolk coast which I could echo in the way I make my prints.I'm sure that in these explorations ways of using other techniques will occur to me along the way.
Another areas of 'making' that I've begun to explore is bookbinding. I'd love to make an artists book at some point using my prints. I think this is a huge area and I've only just started scraping the tip of it but I'm excited by the idea of incorporating my prints into books and designing and making books containing original prints.
The biggest change that is going to happen before the end of the year is that we will move house and I will have a studio. There's no sink so it's not perfect (but I plan on changing that if at all possible!), but it's a large, light room, with cupboards and bookshelves and a lot of space. I can't wait to kit it out with a table and a big plan chest and finally have everything in one place rather than spread all over the house! The experience at Wisley of being surrounded by my work was fantastic and I plan on hanging any framed prints I have on the walls and having my sketch books open and to hand, possibly even hanging (they're mainly concertina style ones) and generally surrounding myself with my work and inspirational bits and pieces (I'm an avid collector of 'things' from the places I walk - I have boxes of feathers and leaves and shells and stones). We don't tend to have any of my work displayed in the rest of the house (the walls are full) so this will be part vanity room but also I think its really important to look at what I've made and be able to see sketches and ideas easily. I hope that all the reminders will push the work forward without the big pauses between prints that seem to happen. I find these pauses frustrating but they can usually be explained by a school holiday or some other life-distraction that takes over for a week or so. I think it's also partly because I can't see things I'm part way through working on so I forget about them and partly because the inspiration isn't in front of me so I don't have the urgency when I can't see it. I'm hoping that I'll also remove the setting up and time barriers I currently have and therefore be more productive. I find Mondays and Tuesdays are currently useless for printing because by the time I've walked the dog, dealt with the washing and shopped for food then dealt with that (Monday) or had a lecture (Tuesday) there is so little time left that it's hard to justify getting everything out when I'd have to pack up after only 20 minutes. Without all this setting up and packing away I should have more time and also just be able to leave things ready to go straight back to the next day. It'll all just be much easier!
As for the forest project I feel that is going to be ongoing... forever! (Or until we completely leave the area, which we have no current plans to do). The new house is actually closer to the east of the forest than we currently are to the south and I'll be going back to the Bagshot part regularly since the children are still at school here and our friends are here and it's 'my' bit of the forest. It has streams and bluebells and other attractions that the Ascot side doesn't have. I want to keep going with the deeper exploration of what it means to be in a managed forest, to see the timber removed and then to watch it regrow. I'm really interested in the efforts at increasing the biodiversity that are being made across all Crown Estate land at the request of the King. It'll be fascinating to see how it changes under it's new owner. I want to try to record something of that. In time I wonder about asking for a formal 'residency' position or finding a way of showing the Crown estate what I'm doing and seeing if they would allow me access to archives and information to expand my understanding.
My biggest ultimate goal is to be accepted by the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. This is part vanity and recognition, part practical as they hold browsers for sale and mount selling exhibitions but overall I would like to produce work of a high enough standard to be accepted. Being part of a cohort or group is incredibly informative and supportive for my practice so I think this would be both wonderfully validating and incredibly supporting. I think I need to keep working for a couple of years to really settle into my practice without the MA to guide me, hopefully be accepted for one of their open calls and then I'll have the confidence to apply. I've been lucky enough to meet someone already accepted who is also taking this course so a little insight into the application and what I might get out of it will be wonderful.
I plan on continuing to apply for open calls to both get my work seen more widely, sell work and give me an excuse to go to exhibitions and meet artists. At some point I would love to have a solo exhibition and plan on pitching this to South Hill Park where my printmaking group recently had a big exhibition. It's so local that I think my work being of local interest would work well here. I need to build up a body of work about the forest that hasn't already been exhibited here so this is at least a couple of years away but something to think about pitching in the new year when I have a few new prints to show them.
My art practice is also my income source so making work that I can sell is important, but I have really enjoyed exploring installation style work that is not designed to sell but feeds into and comes from other pieces that are more 'commercial'. I'd like to continue to work in this way if I can find places to exhibit different types of work alongside more traditional prints. The Woolwich Contemporary Print Fair is one option that I plan to explore.
Overall I just want to keep making artwork that is authentic and what I want to make. I don't currently take commissions or bend my work to anyone elses will. I love discussing the work and exploring ideas with others (I'm looking forward to being able to go back to my local print studio on a Tuesday now and then, to work alongside others) but when it comes down to it I only want to make the work that I want to make, and I know that's the only kind that I'll make well and feel proud of.
I plan to keep making that work, keep developing it, keep looking and responding and keep in touch with the amazing cohort of people that I've met on this course. I feel set up for at least the next 10 years now... the only thing I am in need of is the 'check up' low residency week in a couple of years, I wonder if I could convince Jonathan to run alumni events?!