For much of my practice, painting has been the place where I've explored the relationship between the human psyche and the natural world. Through colour, mark-making and layered surfaces, I've become increasingly interested in themes of vulnerability, fragmentation, repair and transformation. Nature has never simply been my subject matter; it has become a way of thinking about what it means to be human.
Over time, I've realised that the questions driving my work have begun to outgrow the canvas.
'Stop all the clocks' Mixed Media, Ruth Egon
Rather than wanting to leave painting behind, I find myself asking whether these ideas might be experienced differently through materials, objects and space. What happens when fragility is no longer represented in paint, but embodied in a material? How might a viewer physically encounter ideas of erosion, repair or transformation rather than simply observe them?
These questions have led me towards installation and sculptural practice, not as a rejection of painting, but as a natural extension of it.
I am particularly drawn to handmade paper and natural pigments because their material qualities seem to echo the ideas I have been exploring for many years. Paper is created through a process of breaking down and reforming. Natural pigments change over time, responding to light, moisture and their environment. These materials are not passive carriers of meaning; they possess behaviours that seem to parallel the continual processes of change found in both nature and ourselves.
Recently, a conversation with installation artist Sophy King introduced me to the distinction between object thinking and spatial thinking. It was a simple idea, but one that has stayed with me.
Am I interested in making sculptural objects? Or am I interested in creating environments that people move through and experience?
At this stage, I don't know the answer.
Perhaps the most exciting part of this new direction is allowing that question to remain open.
Rather than beginning with a predetermined outcome, I want to follow the materials, test ideas through making, and see where they lead. This feels less like learning a new technique and more like developing a new artistic language.
This journal is a record of that process.
Over the coming months I'll be documenting research, conversations, material experiments and moments of discovery as I begin exploring how installation, handmade paper and natural pigments might open up new ways of investigating the relationship between the human psyche and the natural world.
I don't yet know what the work will become.
But I know the enquiry has already begun.