Crossing the Threshold (2025)

This series explores connections between physical and creative action, emotions and growth. Starting a new strength training program to increase flexibility and space around my joints, I became curious about different ways of approaching space in my work practice. I realised that one way for the physical to impact the creative was to focus on movement.

Inspired by stretching and twisting from my training, I created stencils with organic shapes and used them to make unique multi-layered monoprints on paper. During the process I realised that apart from physical and creative development, this was an opportunity for emotional growth. I could use this process of image-making to help me close an emotional door on a difficult memory. Opening a door draws the shape of a quarter circle; I decided that every circle I made would be a positive step towards crossing the threshold from darkness into the light.

For the oils on canvas, I selected sections of the stencils to help me outline and define areas. For the first time in decades, I also used a mixed up black in my colour palette. More than a doorway, the circle started feeling like a globe relating to both inner and outer worlds. For me, the paintings took on a feeling of map-making, as if through this different approach, I was exploring continents.

My initial ideas around space making generated the titles for the artworks. Bringing physical movement and creative expression together to examine a darkness in my heart made me more aware of how the different parts of our lives are connected and can be used to impact one another. My investigations into space, edge and form may have closed one door, but they are opening another that leads to new beginnings.