Home is where my heart is.

Since this is not my first blog post ever. I don’t feel the need to introduce this post as just that. Though it’s my first post in here.

I’ve made numerous attempts in the past but felt too self conscious to publish or if I did publish I’ve found myself hurriedly deleting. As much as I’ve always falsely tried to justify my reasons for deleting prior blogs. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to fill them with content that I hoped would interest my followers. A couple of those reasons have been that writing has never been my forte. Delete. I’m a visual artist, writing is not important insofar that it isn’t required as an artist. Delete. Though none of the above is not entirely true, as I’ve recently written almost 10,000 words, for my future posts about ‘My Life Story’. It’s the 3rd manuscript I’ve written. The other two are children’s stories. I’ve turned them into ebooks. I love writing. I can write for hours. Besides, writing stories has been something that I’ve enjoyed from the age of 7 when in Junior school. I won book prizes for filling whole exercise books and reading them out loud entertaining my school friends in the playground at breaktimes.

Clicking the delete button, self sabotaging, so-to-speak has been a constant theme which has been debilitating throughout my life- I‘ve spent many years paying the non monetary price and overcoming the consequences.

Dare I say that it has developed into a starting point for me to move on, reassemble, recreate and start-over. Begining anew. I work tirelessly towards a goal, that of which is-to have the initial ideas manifest into a desirable object, which has been made from the limited means & materials, at hand in my environment at that particular time. My work has an immediacy to it.

These objects that I create are traces I leave behind. Whilst they lead me into a path of discovery & hopefully the viewer. At the same time they document through the expression of visuals, line, drawings, text, texture & colours the enquiring fragility of a mind and the vulnerability of a life lived on the fringes of an undocumented subculture of an underclass that few survive without coming out of it with at least one debilitating behavioural psychosis or symptom.

This Blog will be an uncharted space where I will write and post about my experiences. The human vulnerabilities & frailties and the pure beingness of that which informs my work.

My work gestures to one that holds the insightful knowledge one aquires from having experienced the depth of loss, passion & painful emotional experiences.

All just merely read like an ingredients list and are the driving forces that have built the resilience & given me the endurance that has equipped me to succeed in overcoming many challenging obstacles. They are the reasons behind why I create what I do and which shapes me as an individual and artist.

As an artist it is through my work that I view my own life.

I am reminded of the magnificent alchemy that has happened. Has to happen between the mind, heart, hand & matter. A process.

Working in different mediums and forms, such as drawing, painting, installations & writing stories. Has been my saving grace. For that I am truly grateful & thankful. It is in this light which I have begun my online journaling with a view to publishing ‘My Story’ in my posts along with images of my mixed array of work

past & current. By structuring the life stories & experiences around my achievements, which varies from successfully being able to get myself up and out of bed, wash, clothe and feed myself, to creating art pieces that have gone on to be exhibited in;

The Museum Of Everything at Tate Modern and also in Exhibitions as far as New York and Melbourne Australia.

I have mapped the beginning of my life as I remember it, around the places where I’ve lived, up to my present life as I live it today alone in Lockdown.

Homes and domestic life are a recurring theme. So are the same constant thoughts that underpin these themes; the quest to feel safe at home in my heart, my soul my mind and dwelling. They are interwoven between the lines of the dialogue one has with oneself at the outset. When I decide upon creating, during & through to execution & completion. My starting point a battle which arises out of the questioning. Is it out of a need? a desire? or will? or is it the symptoms of Bi-polar?or a hyper-mania moment?. Or should I just lay in bed?.