“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you” Gospel of Thomas
The discovery of two large masses on my ovaries - and a prognosis of high risk for cancer (which, in the end, it wasn’t) marked the beginning of my foray into making art. It forced the question:
What am I not doing, that I truly want to do? I wanted to make art.
‘The Dinner Party’ (postcard by Martin Creed)
Having no formal talent or even interest in drawing or painting this seemed a little arrogant at best. But I was strangely drawn to cockroaches. Living in Florida at the time, I would find them dead under the couch now and then. Once I made the decision to use them in my art, a curious thing happened - one would show up dead outside my back door almost every day. I wondered if my cat was catching them. Were they surrendering themselves for art? I don’t know. But I took it as a sign. A good omen.
‘Is this All Madness’ (block letters by Alice Turpin)
My work is inspired by a lifelong pull towards the Shadow - those murky, often uncomfortable places in the psyche we tend to avoid. But I believe that’s exactly where our treasure lives. As reviled little creatures that inhabit the dark, cockroaches became the perfect medium for this exploration.
‘Mass’
Each piece I create is a kind of offering. A tiny underworld. A mirror. A quiet reminder that what we push away might just be the very thing that sets us free. My work doesn’t seek to soothe but to reveal - to open portals into deeper layers of consciousness, asking us to look again, feel deeper and to reconsider where healing truly begins.
“In spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness – or perhaps because of this the shadow is the seat of creativity” Carl Jung
‘Birth’ (postcard by David Shrigley)