Thank you for joining me here for this quiet little conversation, taking a moment to be with these thoughts, words and images.

For a number of years now I've been following a group of artists from the Cornwall area of the UK. It's a stunningly beautiful coastal area that would definitely be on my itinerary if I were ever to visit the UK again.

One of the artists I so admire, Neil Canning, has a new show https://neilcanning.com/work/future-horizons/ at the New Craftsman Gallery in St. Ives. I very much love the energy of Neil's marks in this new group of paintings. If I had to choose only one painting from this group I think it would be West Coast Surf - the sharpness of the straight line marks against the softness of the white fading to blue are such delicious juxtapositions. My brain is trying to work out how I might create that effect with threads in my own work...something to investigate perhaps in the upcoming body of work.

The marks of Neil Canning's paintings have me thinking about how we each have our own unique language - not just the actual languages we speak or write, but also our physical language - the way we physically move through our day, how we arrange the objects in our living spaces, how we interact with others in the day to day moments of life. Questions about what the edges of those interactions feel like, what is the essence distilled in to that exchange ...an opportunity to be more conscious of the qualities of the present moment.

untitled (passageways), one of my favourite paintings, was the inspiration for many of the marks i made on cloth last summer, with the intention to recreate the feelings of motion, movement, and contrast so apparent in this artwork. this final painting in the passageways series never did reveal it's name to me - somehow 'untitled' seems still to suit it best - leaving lots of room for the ways it might be experienced

And as always, I want to express my gratitude to be living and working on the ancestral & unceded territories of the hən̓̓qəmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.I honour the incredible depths of grace, courage and perseverance of Indigenous Peoples, and look to them as an example as they find their voices amidst the noise and obfuscation of colonization.

until next time,

Mardell