I am a hand embroiderer and a collagist, I make artworks and keep visual diaries in order to understand my place in the world. Both the world and I constantly change; I document how I feel about this.
I use a process known as active documentation when I create work; this means that all my investigations are recorded as part of a body of research material that is diaristic in format and emphasis. By capturing information at the time it is found and made then accidental discoveries, improvements or problematic blocks (which can become invisible with progress) are then kept available for me to reflect on then use.
When I make artwork as embroidery or collage, in sketchbooks or as notations and photographs I am engaging with material processes to report, reflect and discover coherence or disturbance. My artwork is simply me thinking aloud.
My influences span art and design history, and my making process can best be described as thinking when making or transcognition. This is the on-going dialogue that operates between, within and around an artist, an artwork, the viewer and its context where each has a role in constructing meaning from an artwork. My art practice enables me to hold ideas and provides time to reflect upon them. This is arts practice as a dialogic tool, a process used to reflect on events and objects, and then to understand their place within my life as a whole.