Making Paint

I wrote this poem about the transcendental joy of creating art – and meaning – from handmade paint:

Aurora Quackalis and other strange forms

Above: Aurora Quackalis, 2022 Experimental pieces to explore spontaneous creativity. Acrylic and ink on 250 gsm multimedia paper.   

Freehand Mandalas

This mandala is comprised of freehand circles and squares, difficult in this size but so liberating in its spontaneity.

Personalised bookplate art on recycled limestone paper

This is a little experiment on recycled limestone paper (also known as stone paper). The paper is super smooth and has a lovely feel to it, but it is basically calcium carbonate (80%) bonded with bio-polyethylene resin (20%). It is water proof and resistant to tear, but is sensitive to UV which means it biodegrades…

Memory and the Imagination

We are so bound by our experience of time. We tend to think of time as flowing from one point to another, or as an arrow that moves in one direction, never standing still but continuously moving. As such, we are always in the present. A present that keeps moving, but because we exist in…

Art, imagination, and the live tradition

Reflections on “The Gift” (1983) by Lewis Hyde.

The tasteless water of souls

I do not feel that – on my own – I necessarily have very much to add creatively or intellectually to the live tradition that is already in the air. In one way or another, it has already been said, written, done, articulated. The stories have already been told, and in a sense, all I…

Can the creative journey be planned?

So, out of curiosity, I decided to get a copy of 52 Weeks of Writing: Author Journal and Planner by Mariëlle S Smith. It’s a self-help guide, about 500 pages thick, on how to plan and organise a meaningful writing regime over the next year. I’m on my first week, and already I am made…

Creative journeys

I’m weird. I like to look at a beautiful blank book, feel the unwritten pages, smell the fresh leather of the cover, and imagine the possibilities that lie within those pages. But once the ink touches the paper, and words are coerced into existence from the ether of the subconscious, meaning (or the semblance of…