I’m very pleased to have my work included in this year’s Black Swan Open.

This work has been selected, together with a few supporting studies….

Thames-Side Studios Gallery, Thames-Side Studios,
Harrington Way, Warspite Road, Woolwich,
SE18 5NR
www.thames-sidestudios.co.uk

EXHIBITION DATES 20 October – 3 November
GALLERY OPENING HOURS Thurs-Sun 12pm – 5pm
OPENING PARTY Friday 19 October 6pm – 8.30pm
Gen Doy performance 7.30pm

The Ghost Tide – coinciding with the festivals of Hallowe’en, All Souls and the Day of the Dead – takes as its starting point the perspective that ghosts exist as an idea, or as part of a belief system, across cultures, across national borders and throughout recorded history. Most languages contain words to describe the ghost, spirit or immaterial part of a deceased person. Often, these words – like the type of ghost they describe – have traversed borders and been assimilated across cultures.
The exhibition, situated next to the Thames Barrier in South-East London, evokes ghosts as a migratory tide, washed up along the shore of the Thames their historical baggage in tow. It also explores the presence of artists in this part of London, as a migratory tide of creative flotsam and jetsam which ebbs and flows as the city gentrifies and develops.

Featured works include sculpture, installation, film, sound, performance and wall based works. The exhibition will include installations and outdoor interventions, as well as public events.
The Ghost Tide features works by over 30 UK and international artists.

Artists featured: Andrea G Artz, Chris Boyd, Davies, Monaghan & Klein, Gen Doy, Sarah Doyle, Graham Dunning, Diane Eagles, Andrew Ekins, Charlie Fox, Katie Goodwin, Kio Griffith, Miyuki Kasahara, Calum F Kerr, Rob La Frenais, David Leapman, Liane Lang, Toby MacLennan, Laura Marker, Joanna McCormick, Josie McCoy, Jane Millar, Output Arts, Miroslav Pomichal, Brothers Quay, Anne Robinson, Edwin Rostron, Matt Rowe, Sarah Sparkes, Charlotte Squire, Sara Trillo, Yun Ting Tsai, Kate Walters, Patrick White, Heidi Wigmore, Neale Willis, Mary Yacoob, Neda Zarfsaz.

About the Curators: Monika Bobinska is the director of CANAL, which organizes exhibitions and art projects in a variety of settings. She is the founder of the North Devon Artist Residency.
Sarah Sparkes is an artist and curator. She leads the visual arts and creative research project GHost (initiated in 2008), curating an on-going programme of exhibitions, performances and inter-disciplinary seminars interrogating the idea of the ghost.

CURATORS’ TALK Saturday 20 October 3pm – 4pm
DAY OF THE DEAD CLOSING PARTY Saturday 3 November 2pm – 7.30pm

Papel Picado Workshop 2pm – 5pm   Make your own Day of the Dead ‘cut – outs’ with artist Sarah Doyle. Suitable for all ages, materials provided
Performances and Artist Led Walk 2pm – 5pm  Charlie Fox, Calum F Kerr, Joanna Mccormick, in and around the gallery
Day Of The Dead Feast  5pm – 6pm   Refreshments served
International Film Screening 6pm  Screening of short films in the gallery: Chris Boyd, Liane Lang, Brothers Quay, Yun Ting Tsai and Neda Zarfsaz

For more information, contact us on l 0786 606 3663 | 07900 208 711 |
theghosttide@gmail.com
www.ghosthostings.co.uk | www.canalprojects.info

I’ve had a productive Summer, with many lovely long days in my studio. I’ve been listening to music each day, especially by  young counter-tenors Filippo Mineccia and Jakob Jozef Orlinski. The timbre of the music helps me to find the clarity I need to work well. Shetland continues to inspire me and I hope to return there before long.

I also realised I haven’t posted pictures of the show at Herrick Gallery last October. So here they are!

My work will soon be represented in New York which is very exciting news….

and I’ve an exhibition opening at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh on February 28th, 2019. The exhibition will host the launch of my new book, Shetland Notebooks.

Here are a few examples of new work…which is mostly on a larger scale…

After a long and hot drive via a swim at Charmouth (very hot car without air-conditioning!) and staying overnight with friends in Dorset, I arrived on the beautiful Romney Marsh. Even as you leave Rye something changes. It’s like stepping back in time: the roads narrow, become twisty; there are railway tracks with barely any gates; animals graze in mixed herds on flat land and there’s a painter’s sky. You glimpse fine churches with sloping roofs dating back over a thousand years; vegetables for sale beside the road, and a sense of mystery in the air. I was welcomed by Angie, Richard and Fred – and their very beautiful flowers – tall sentinels, silent songs….

I’d barely arrived when it was time to go to St. Nicholas Church in New Romney for a programme of music performed by voces8 and the Canterbury Cathedral Girls’ Choir.

Driving down the motorway in the on the way I’d listened to Radio 3 and heard a marvellous piece sung by voces8 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b8bk8z )- I’d wept as I drove, thinking, ‘how on earth am I going to work tonight, to not cry?!’

I found myself a place to sit near the front,  to one side, where I hoped to be unobtrusive. I was working with the sound of the music, rather than the visual aspect, at this stage. I found a little table and placed my watercolour sticks, oil pastels and sketchbooks within easy reach. It was important that I did not make a sound to disturb the performers or the audience – I was very mindful of this and felt that I hardly breathed during any of the performances!

Here are some notes I made during the concerts:

voces 8: 

Angels are here, in the air moving down with the sound. Golden sound.

The song is made of colour.. mother folds it all in.. 

Magnificat brings halo and a great crown of many horns and foliage boughs

Moondance – a drawing of a golden child/chrysalis – power of music to liberate, to enhance movement towards individuation

Ave Maria  – holding form, enclosing form, comfort; also bridge, all-seeing eye;

Dove: In beauty may I walk – orange band, vertical figures/strokes

Music forms a Spirit cloud above, impregnates the ear, is born in cells; I can make myself a safe ground in sound.

The human voice was prominent on this first evening.  I felt a golden quality, a purity, a roundness, a bell-like resonance. The following day I sat in Angie and Richard’s lovely kitchen and began to work from my notes and my quick drawings. What emerged were watercolours in yellows and golds, exploring what happens to the cells of the body as the music is heard and absorbed. Listening to the music, feeling it tranforming the body, had the effect of instilling in me the feeling that I could create my own ground, a safe ground, through it’s transforming and purifying qualities. It’s like having every cell of one’s being stroked and restored.

I was also feeling that the music provided wings which could carry and support, like a marvellous etheric horse….or bird… or winged creature… like this moth, an elephant hawk moth, which I found one night in the house where I was staying…

The beautiful pink and greeny gold of its wings and fur inspired me to soften my palette. I am always influenced by the beauty of Nature which I find around me when I work; most mornings in Littlestone I walked and took in the beauty of the air, the squealing swifts, the red tower, the open beach, the grey-green sea foliage, the white dog, and the black horse…

Rachmaninov Vespers: 

was performed by  the BBC Singers conducted by Michael Zaugg. It was remarkable. I was fortunate enough to hear some of the rehearsal, and I was struck by the intense ‘Russianness’ of the singing, and of the deep mood. I had a good position to one side, and I made a number of drawings and quite a few notes:

The force of the music pushing against my chest is explored through a series of quick drawings. The power and richness of the sound provides a body/earth-opening/splitting implement. 

The song finds the earth’s navel, hollows it out, makes a nest. Has a round end like the tip of a colossal thigh bone resting in the earth’s newly made socket….

and the earth is opened by song; when the air itself sings it wraps the human form, makes it new.

 Heart meets song; extends vision. Pierced by music. Makes me two;splits me in half (initiation).

Journeys into itself, bids us accompany.

Swift squeal in sky above. Purity. 

Roof breast for/to sky

Roof as woman’s body

Sky drinks milk

the bones below

Flesh floats up

 I think of the steppe, of tightness in the chest; waiting.

Hum, chatter, waiting for the deep, the song sea, the high, the bathing of spirit

– song as air become liquid to bathe the spirit.

We are sung into being.

Bach 48 

this was a wonderful day in two churches – one in the fields, in the quiet, surrounded by tall stems and grasses and wind (St. Mary the Virgin church, St. Mary in the Marsh); the other in the atmospheric St. Leonard’s Church of Hythe, with it’s fine organ and Ossuary.

Drawings of Linda Nicholson (the brilliant keyboard player)becoming a raptor, a fierce focussed bird crouched over the keyboard as she plays.

Organ:  reverberations cause the body fluids to move, to change, to flow: the body flows. 

Music perceived as pink; pink substance imprinting the cells – music as doorway, the opener of the channels..two sequences coming together, as my dream of two separated poles winding together and apart at the same time, making a sequence of new animals on the greeny-blue gel which is moving between them… 

Music as bridge over swimming souls.

The organ reaches out to me, wrapping air in gold  

I rest in the flood and

Air bunches in prayer. 

Notes as nodes in a net of sound

Rocking a baby

Deep comfort

A safe father

Fatherly in a kind way

Reaching across

Purity

Different emotional qualities of voice and organ

Organ resonates deeply with the cells of my body: I sob.

On the last Saturday I worked with my ‘hollow bone’ technique, using my drum and monotype equipment, with people in Sussex and Kent who had booked to have a session with me. The work is sacred, powerful and confidential, so I will not write about any details here. Grahame Davies, the Welsh poet worked alongside me and contributed his own experiences to the participants. It worked very well.

On the last night in New Romney, I gave myself the treat of sitting in the front row, near the London Mozart Players. As I was so close I knew I couldn’t use anything wet. I also didn’t have a table, so I just worked with my notebooks and pencils, and this time, more in respnse to the movements of the conductor than to the way the music affected me. Daniel Cook contains a lot of energetic charge in his body when he conducts, and it was a great pleasure to draw him – but I had to be very quick! I also made a few drawings of a fine young soloist from the Mousai Singers.

Faure: Daniel Cook – wing pressing on ear – this is where I spent the time concentrating on the movements of individual bodies in response to music.

Mantas’ Serenade for Strings: the notes are crying; like a carpet for sleeping; the music strokes my arms (I wrote these words before reading about the music and its’ inspiration/dedication)

On the final day there was an exhibition of works in progress, and in the afternoon Grahame and I gave a talk about creativity, inspiration, and dreams. Grahame read aloud some of his poems, and I spoke about a few of the works I’d made, and about the process of working alongside classical music.

On my way home I stayed near Eastbourne and I caught the train to London – so I could go to the Queens’ Gallery to see the exhibition of Mughal Paintings – I’m a big fan! and it didn’t disappoint…

and I was entranced by the golden lilies in my aunt’s garden…

which continued the golden theme…and then there was West Bay in Dorset… 

and finally another reminder of beloved Shetland… a fish box seen by the harbour at West Bay…

When we went to Assisi, a few years ago, we stayed with a Franciscan brother. Each morning he rose early to say prayers in the little chapel before breakfast.

One morning I joined him for prayers, and I found it an intense and moving experience. He read from Deuteronomy, and I was shocked at the power of the image revealed by the words:

“Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff-necked…” Deuteronomy 10:16.

     

The course on Iona must have 9 participants to run, with a maximum of 12.  I already have three confirmed participants.

           

      

   Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens

Be a gardener
Dig a ditch
toil and sweat
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.                                                    Julian of Norwich

I’ve had a lovely weekend working in the garden with all the dozens of plantlets I’ve raised from seed. It’s been great to be out in the sunshine, with bare skin, the scent of soil and lily of the valley and honeysuckle, and the chorussing of sparrows and wrens. One of my special morning rituals this time of year is to take my breakfast outside into the greenhouse to watch my baby plants growing….I just stand there, being attentive, watching over them.

I’ve resumed my long-term residency at Tremenheere Sculpture Gardens, and each time I visit, I love the garden more. Last week I spent time sitting near a tree doorway for jackdaws, who were raising young.  I wrote notes and edited my writing from the past three years, hoping to make a book about my time in the garden to coincide with my exhibition in the gallery there in September 2019. I will be posting some images soon. For the moment they are gestating.

I’ve been enjoying working in series on pieces considering ancestors, how we carry traces of them in our bodies, and where energetic buds for the memory of them can be held in our bodies. These works will be shown at Arusha Gallery in Edinburgh in March 2019 – when my new book the Shetland Notebooks will be launched.

  Girl with own piece of ground

  Infant with ancestor buds (part of a sequence, studio phone shot only)

I’m looking forwards hugely to the Panel Discussion on May 21st organised by Trewarveneth Studios, and featuring Professor Penny Florence and Dr. Ryya Bread. The discussion will explore Creativity and Openness. This event is kindly hosted by Newlyn Art Gallery, and will be part of Open Studios.

There are more details on our Facebook event feature. https://www.facebook.com/events/252956245271789/

I’m also listening to music in a more focused way, preparing for my residency with Jam on the Marsh in July, when I will tune into the music as it is played in the churches, and I will write and draw on site.

https://www.jamconcert.org/jam-on-the-marsh/

Here is the link to art.earth….about the forthcoming exhbition….

http://artdotearth.org/exhibition-karen-lorenz-and-kate-walters/

  Baby hears herself in song.

In the Garden Gallery, Dartington, I will be showing a series of works with my friend Karen Lorenz, opening April 12th (6 – 8 pm) and open until May 15th.

Some of my work will be new pieces influenced by time spent on Shetland, and some will be the works made pre-Shetland. I’ve recently been thinking more about my process …here are some thoughts and reflections…

I’m very interested in frequencies and energetic vibrations – and classical music which I listen to all the time. I am trained in classical shamanism and I have a lot of knowledge/experience related to that which I draw on.

   Baby song

     Mother as Source

     Mother with pouch catches baby

  Baby with spirit Parents of Song

Course at Shorlands Old Farm on Exmoor with Kate Walters

April 20 – 24th (arriving Friday afternoon after 4 pm, leaving Tuesday morning after breakfast).

Walking, drawing, writing, and painting: tuning into the wild beauty of the place.

Two places left suitable for two friends or a couple (double or twin room).

£500 each or £550 for a single occupancy.

Further details: We will have the use of a large studio on the Farm, which we will work in if it is wet and during some evenings. We will be free to roam on the farm, and we will make a couple of longer walks to wild high points and to the ruins of a mediaeval village.

I will go into detail about my working method and show some recent work. We will look at the poetry of indigenous peoples; work with the Dark Sky, the dream, and practice shamanic walking (a very peaceful and energy-conserving way to walk). There will be the opportunity, safety and space for some deep creative work. It is a lovely group of people already assembled.  Please get in touch for further information and to confirm your place. k.walters@outlook.com   07816 098807  – thank you!