Creative Process

I work in a large attic studio in Sheffield. My background in illustration and urban sketching means that drawing and mark-making is central to my work, whether it is painting or textiles. I think of a stitched mark as a direct parallel to a drawn line, while the sheer organzas and nets I use, rough-cut and layered to create subtle gradations of colour, flow across the work just like watercolour.

My embroidery is hand stitched. I prefer the meditative pace of hand sewing, which allows me the time to formulate ideas as I go along, helping me to work intuitively. Though planning out a project is always necessary to varying degrees, I need some elements of the outcome to remain unpredictable: a lot of my pleasure and inspiration comes from creative play, while incorporating randomness allows space for creative serendipity.

The measured pace of my stitching is in direct contrast to my abstract painting process. In order to capture the energy of instinctive mark-making, I paint quickly: short bursts of energetic work are punctuated with longer periods of observing and thinking. I am intrigued by the balance between apparently random mark-making choices and controlled decision-making. My abstract paintings and drawings evolve in an entirely dynamic manner, with no specific goal in mind.

Aphantasia

​Like many people, I have spent most of my life unaware that I suffer from Aphantasia, which is an inability to imagine or remember imagery. My mind’s eye doesn’t function; when I try to conjure an image, I get the briefest impression, as if I have caught something in my peripheral vision but, if I attempt to look at it directly, it evaporates. Given this, it might seem strange that so many Aphantasics are unaware that they have the condition, but we generally have no reason to think that other people’s abilities are different to our own.

Much of my work explores the symptoms of Aphantasia, but I am also fascinated by the ways in which the condition informs my creative method. My process always has its focus on the here and now, and my creative decision-making is far more reactive than reflective. It also explains why working from memory or imagination has always been impossible for me, without me understanding the reasons at the time. This is something which undoubtedly led to my passion for urban sketching: recording the ongoing immediacy of the present-tense environment, in real time. Aphantasia also explains why, when I’m out and about with my sketchbook, I can paint or draw anything which is in front of me but, if the subject is removed, I cannot continue, not even for a second.