Zed is a formidable letter and it returns us to the A... the Zed of the fly... it is perhaps the elemental movement that precided over the creation of the world... when I invoke the zigzag it is about there being no universals but rather assemblages of singularities... The question is how to bring disparate singularities into relationships or into potentials... The origin of the world always begins with a dark precursor that noones sees, and then the lightning that illuminates, and that is the world. That’s also what thought must be, and what philosophy must be: the grand Z...

Gilles Deleuze From A to Z interviews with Claire Parnet, filmed by Pierre-André Boutang 1988-89. 

Writing about my paintings

Sources for beginning a painting range from anatomical diagrams, screenshots and mapping to abstract mark-making that is improvised and cathartic.  I develop a conversation with each work over time, starting out with a shape that I’m comfortable with and giving form to a message that often surprises me as it comes to light - this can be psychological, political, philosophical or social and can be interpreted in multiple ways; for me, it is usually related to the body, the mind, healing, how one interacts with others, in family, in society, online.  I consider my language to be feminine, meditative and active, occupying a space that demands attention, competing with the bold colours of LED screens, simultaneously offering a rest from technology.  A handmade personal painting (PP), intentionally similar in scale to a laptop; when one connects with a painting it can mirror a part of themselves, forming a subtle connection between the maker and the viewer.

What guides poetic thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things "suffer a sea-change" and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living....

Hannah Arendt From The Artificial Kingdom - A Treasury of the Kitsch Experience by Celeste Olalquiaga

Notes about my painting process

There is a temporality that permeates this body of work.  My use of aquarelle with a combination of natural resin and acrylic binder on gesso panels has enabled me to create thin layers, glazes and washes.  There is a freedom using water in comparison with oils, the flow is less toxic on inhalation and on my hands.  The paintings have an impermanent quality.  They are fibrous in nature, biological, delicate.  They require protection from sunlight or they will fade.  The resin as it dries out over time may become brittle, creating unexpected patterns and craquelure across the surface, accelerated by varying environmental conditions.  For me, this transient quality, observing how the paintings may change over time, is embraced and understood as part of their poetry.  The question of their display, framing devices, aging and care, has grown to be of conceptual interest to me within the work itself.