LIVING WITH CHILDREN
August 2019
Being commissioned to make new work for Whitley Bay's ArtHouses event in 2019 gave me chance to expand further the idea of making surfaces onsite out of foil, using a process that allows me to take in the surroundings while making temporary casts on the floor.
My work was hosted by a family in their home, and going up for a day of preparation work to make the floor cast foil surfaces, revealed a very familiar and welcome approach to living with children: messy, playful, child-friendly spaces mixed in with the lives of grown-ups.
I spent the day making surfaces from rooms in the home, working with the areas available – including an incredibly long living room, which I was very excited about! I love BIG spaces! I took a bunch of photos throughout the home too, mainly details of colours, shapes, patterns, and textures.
It was a hot day, and making these surfaces gets very physical. I remember feeling sweaty in the spare room at the top of the house, so I opened the window and took in some air while being mesmerised by watching the sea.
When it was time to head home, I folded up my foil surfaces and had a long and pleasant train ride home. You know that feeling where your body is vibrating with energy and your ideas are flowing, but you're also kind of woozy-tired so you pick up your pen and sketchbook but really nothing can come out yet because despite the fullness of feeling, so you gaze out the window and bathe in daydreams instead.
Back home I then spent the next 4 weeks (in between doing my day job and being a mum) working on making the paintings. My husband and I are very lucky to each have a studio in our home and a dining room, so I was able to use all these spaces for making the paintings. Again, I enjoyed the similarity of having collected the surfaces in several rooms at the Whitely Bay home and then working on the paintings in several rooms at our own home.
All the paintings were then folded up and packed in two large cardboard boxes, along with big balloons and an air pump. I like the feeling of posting art in this way. Having its own journey without me. Wondering if it will get lost... a relief that it's not, and the adrenalin of opening it knowing it'll be on public view very soon, so I'd better crack on!
I couldn’t help but respond to this family home by making something joyous. Through my initial process of making foil surfaces, I absorbed beautiful colours, forms, patterns, textures, and many acts of creativity surrounding me. I felt empathy for the experience of living – and sharing – a home with two young children, embracing their wildness and chaos. Being inspired by their freedom.
These works continue to change as they are folded and expanded, gaining a high-speed patina of creases, holes, tears, and echoes of paint-flaked mirror. When inflated there are reflections, memories of sides now unseen, as its form (which is ever-so-slowly deflating) is explored.
As I deflated the balloons and packed ‘Living With Children’ away I placed one of the paintings on top of the other, and PING! here comes another idea! This happens so often – through the process of packing away and tidying up, new unexpected ideas are able to emerge.
