Interview to the artist by Rachelle Gryn Brettler, from our Anniversary Book
I have worked with a variety of media during my life — starting off with ceramics, then morphing through to drawing.
When I was six, in my grandmother’s house there was a Siamese cat sitting by the fire that I decided to draw. I started to draw a ubiquitous child drawing of a cat — on a slate with some chalk — and I suddenly stopped and, I remember this incredibly clearly, I thought I would actually look at the cat and draw what I saw. I drew this cat and I was very pleased with it. When my mother returned she was exceedingly pleased too. That really was the trigger point. My mother was incredibly creative herself and I was fortunately encouraged, my father was discouraged from sending me into business, and I was allowed to go to art college.
About twenty years ago I did a stone carving course with my daughter — and that led me to sell my house, go to London, and learn how to carve stone. I tried stone because it was the only thing that I had never worked with before. I love the physicality of it — because it is so heavy, it requires lots of tools and I am a girl who loves boys’ toys, it is a very tool-rich discipline. I found it very grounding and immensely meditative because the process is so slow, not like an abstract expressionist, that is all about expressing and throwing things out there and then observing what has happened. Working with stone is very, very measured because if you knock the wrong bit off — that is it, you have to rethink. It suited me well.
During the two years I studied at City & Guilds, I was fortunate enough to go to India. I learnt a lot from a man called Raj, carving on the sandy steps of his house. He taught me that I could carve straight from a drawing, not from a model, and it completely opened up the potential for creativity. It was transformational and I have not looked back.
My main medium is stone — alabaster, ancaster weatherbed and caen. When I first started carving, it was much easier to get hold of stone and I started collecting it. A lot of it has been quarried out now because it is indiscriminately being ripped out and it is a very finite source. When I was travelling around then, if I saw something I liked the look of, I bought it, so I have stockpiled, which means that in my workshop I still have material that is almost impossible to get hold of today.
It is a disciplined process because I have my block of stone — I will look at it carefully to see if there are any weaknesses that have to either be avoided or knocked off so that nothing breaks. Then, I have a strong sense of what is happening within the stone — whether the colour changes, whether there is a particularly interesting characteristic, and only then I start to draw. As the drawing is two-dimensional, when I am working it into a three-dimensional form, things do need to change, so I make quite subtle changes within that three-dimensional capacity.That changes the surface behaviour of the piece and gives it a rhythm and movement, rather than it just being a block with a shape cut in it.
All my ideas are informed by the natural world because we cannot beat what is created within the universe, can we? Maybe an arum lily shape, sometimes I take a section of a plant or flower, seedheads — or a single rose petal, lovely things that curl around. I have also worked with twigs that intertwine.
Each piece takes me several weeks because I am quite slow, I do not work fast with the mechanical tools as they are really scary. I made a conscious decision that I wanted to make things that did not have the need for a deep and meaningful explanation. It is about the simplicity and the clarity of form.
My view of myself is that I am a conduit and I am facilitating something that is coming from I do not know where, through me into my hands, my tools and what I am making, that is my role. I just happen to bring them into existence. It is a little bit hippy, but I want my pieces to be out there in the world, drawing down good and beautiful energy. In order to do that they actually need to be quite simple.