Artistic news

Exciting new beginnings...

Farleys House and sculpture garden (Sculpture, ‘Revealed’, by Keith Pettit)

I am delighted to announce that I have been named one of three lucky recipients of the Newport Women’s Forum bursary for 2024. The Forum was established to support women in the city of Newport, by providing funding to help them achieve their potential.

My award will cover the tuition fees for Hastings Art School's year-long Artist Development Programme (online cohort). The course is aimed at anyone with a committed art practice, and is an affordable alternative to a traditional art school. It includes weekly seminars, group crits, 1:1 tutorials, and an exhibition (gulp) at the end of each of the three terms. I will be encouraged & supported to develop my voice, connect with other artists, figure out where my practice fits in the broader artistic landscape, and learn about the business side of art.

I am beyond excited to have the opportunity to undertake this course. If you have been following my posts for some time, you will be familiar with my attempts to pursue an artistic life, as a part of my greater ‘journey of re-enchantment’ with the world. It has been somewhat erratic up to now, as I have had to navigate emotional growth, house moves and the ups & downs of self-employment alongside my creative passions – but I feel I am finally emerging from the wilderness. I have clarity on what I’m exploring, and have carved out time to regularly practise my art. I now look forward to having a formalised structure within which I will be gently challenged to explore my creative vision and develop my work.

This is what I put in my application for the bursary…

"I...like many people, had my life turned upside down by the COVID pandemic. Having moved to Newport in 2019 for my then-husband's work, I eventually came to realise that my marriage was over, and I moved out of the marital home to 'find myself'. I've always identified as a creative person, and had mostly pursued this through writing (unpublished), but I now felt an overpowering urge to express myself visually. For a year I tried pretty much every artistic exploration going, from painting experiments to pottery workshops to drawing classes, and finally came to realise that my medium of choice - the one that gets me seriously excited and twitching to get going on it - is collage. Specifically, collaging with words: 'found poetry', or even my own poetry portrayed in visual form. I get to express myself by doing what I'm good at (words) in a format not usually associated with it. It's mindblowing! I feel the world is opening up to me in a way it has never done before: after years of doing what I felt was expected of me, I am finally finding my voice and doing things my way.

Applying to a traditional art school is not a realistic option for me. However, Hastings Art School has no specific barriers to entry, provides an online option, and offers me the chance to pursue my artistic journey with advice, critiques and practical support to help me develop my vision & skills and get my work out there into the world. It seems like the perfect opportunity for me at this time of my life.

I am self-employed, and my existing freelance work... has taken a downturn since COVID. Whilst financially nerve-racking, this has given me the space to question what I really want to do with the rest of my life, and I have realised that if I don't take my artistic leanings seriously now, I will always regret it. This funding would enable me to pursue my creative dream: I am at a turning point in my life, and I feel I need to make a choice of hope and faith in myself. As Newport has been the place where I have discovered this latent potential, it would be wonderful to be supported by the city in helping it to grow even further."

And here is what I put in my application for Hastings:

"I am an emerging collage artist, currently navigating the second half of my life and seeking an expression of the visual/symbolic to complement the verbal/linguistic practice (writing, theatre) that characterised the first half. A former librarian, I am fascinated by the stories we tell (oral, written, visual) and the ways they inspire us to make new stories of our own. I am interested in the juxtaposition of words & images and the different ways they reach us & speak to us; at present I am working primarily with found poetry/imagery, but in time I hope also to incorporate my own words & photography into my art. I find myself particularly drawn to the weird, the esoteric & the mystical, and I am curious to discover how I may express myself within these worlds."

This last piece of text feels rather like a fledgling ‘artist statement’, although I am still in the very early stages of my artistic career and am not yet sure what twists and turns my path will take. Anything – or everything – could change! For instance, last week I visited Sussex to see, firstly, the Leonora Carrington exhibition at Newlands House Gallery; and, secondly, Farleys House & Gallery, ‘Home of the Surrealists’ and former home of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. To say I was inspired by Farleys is an understatement. I found myself surrounded by the life and work of not one but two artists, each of whom had a passion for the practices and movements I am most drawn to: photography, surrealism, collage, poetry, curation… It felt like exactly the right place to visit at exactly the right time in my life: as if the universe was sending me a definite message that this work, here and now, is what I am meant to do. The recurrence of Sussex – in particular Hastings – is also, I think, no accident…

I came away rather overwhelmed, as you do when you’ve had an epiphany. But I am pulling myself together and gearing up for my course, which begins next week. I am enormously grateful to Newport Women's Forum for awarding me this funding, and am excited & intrigued to discover what will emerge in my practice when I connect with my tutors and fellow students. I will be posting selected updates both here and on Instagram, so you can follow my journey.

I hope it will be an interesting ride!