So my time has come to end my time here on the residency, but I feel that this experience is one that may always remain with me, the nature of Reside and its intimacy is special in that way. I highlighted my journey over the last six months in my previous post and so I am left with one final piece of work to add before finally passing the residency over to the next artist. 

I ended up with taking one of my ink drawings and creating from it an alternative to the construction for coastline. This piece seems to leave me open to suggestions, but with a firmer grip on getting to places, maybe towards one final place? Unknown places? It seems also to leave something behind; recent times, ancient times. Yet it sits firmly in the constant now and firmly for a future of the private and intimate and the universal. There are many questions that remain with me; where do I and will I reside? What places will I go to as my work unfolds?  

I sit and look at the drawing, cut and placed to represent a large steel piece looking out at the Atlantic, facing the passing of each slow moment of eternity, ageing and firm and I think of my own process of creating a correlative to my life, how I face time too. The whole process is full of ambiguity. It will always be that still, melancholic certainty.  

So the time has come for the next artist to embark upon their own journey with Reside. It was a time of much needed thought for me to select, but my choice was to pass this residency over to Michaela Nettell, who will be moving towards a time of great change in her life, one that will mean her coming to terms with her domestic environment and her working practice in new ways. I hope the time with Reside will be as intimate and fruitful as I have found it and she too can cherish it. 

Thankyou Reside for what you allow to be. 

I loved the idea of a voyage around your room and felt for a long time I had been doing just that. My life and work had become about my home; how I existed within it, how all of the unseen and fleeting things we only glimpse in our mind, or from the corner of our eye made themselves acutely aware, how the constraints of this impacted upon me and the art. It was an infinity squeezed into a small and very intimate space. It is why the Reside Residency caught my eye.

Working in this way, as followers of my work will know, is a very melancholic journey expressed through my work and words and made through fear and doubt about time and mortality, about control of time and change. I have learned a lot over the past six months that this residency as taken place, I have been through a lot in my personal life and discovered ways of working I would never have thought of if it were not for this opportunity. I have had that voyage around my room, my home, but what has happened is that the voyage has now expanded outwards to places I would never have thought of; voyages in my mind. I have fought with many ideas in search of the abstraction I have had a vision for over many years and because of the nature of Reside, I have reached that vision through the pieces I made here. 

I started out thinking about painting, painting is where I've ended up, but in a new way. Apart from this, however, I have made some exciting work with small scale model constructions all based upon the idea of the small looming large, constructions that have left me with ideas about making these in the future as real, large scale landscape pieces, but I have been encouraged how these tiny models have worked ambiguously once photographed. They are simple yet have also had the potential to inform my work on paper too.

Drawing has always been a key element, but I departed from it for a while and again, because of the work here, I have returned to it with interest. I made drawings to give idea for the constructions and paintings, but most importantly, I have made drawings that are works that can stand alone, works with depth and experience. 

The paintings have developed a great deal, subtly at times but always forward. They carry, for me, the weight of my thoughts as well as being something that can live on its own, giving back to me even if confronting my self. I believe an artists work should confront the artist. 

From here on, after Reside, the work will continue to move forward as it is and I am excited by it. Above all I'll know now that I can be freed from the constraints of working within the home environment by knowing to reside somewhere means residing in ones own mind and that can take me anywhere. I want to move on to painting large scale work, but space is not allowing that at present. I will, however, take the whole process and idea of Reside with me in my work from here on, because it is a good framework. It will soon be time for a new artist to take their place here and I wish them well. For now, as I think about my last post to come later this month, I wil  continue on and let the residency make one more influence upon my work.