Life in lines

February 20, 2026

The power of a line

When life drawing I like to work quickly with simple, fluid lines, often one continuous line, to express the powerful, sculptural form and shapes made by the body.

A sketch or a finished piece of work?

I’ve no idea how a definition is made between a sketch and a finished piece of work as I feel that sometimes the quickest, simplest of my drawings are the most powerful.
If you’re happy to have it hanging on your wall, does that make it a finished piece of work?

Where and what is important?

Before I start drawing, I contemplate the human sculpture in front of me and think about what interests me in this particular pose. That informs where I put the pen or pencil on the paper, where the line goes and the emphasis of different parts of the body.
Not seen enough yet? There’s plenty more in the Life Drawing section of the Gallery on this website.

Masque, Mask, Masking

July 16, 2024

Masque, Mask, Masking

Who, or what, is behind the mask, whether it be a physical covering or a facial expression or demeanour?

How we perceive ourselves may be very different from how others see us.

For this work I formed lots of papier-mâché masks using Plaster-of-Paris moulds that I made on my own face. Each mask I made from the moulds is a slightly different version of me, something of me, yet none of them really me.

Mask

A covering, physical or intangible, hiding something from view

Mask

A covering for all or part of the face, its purpose to disguise, amuse or frighten

Mask

A facial expression concealing emotions or giving a false impression

Mask

An outward appearance belying inner feelings

Mask

A likeness of a person’s face, often moulded from the face itself, for religious, ceremonial or decorative purposes

Mask

A hollow figure of a human head, used in theatre to identify a character and to amplify the voice

Masque

Masque has its origins in a folk tradition dating back to 16th century. On special occasions, masked players would unexpectedly call on the nobility singing, dancing, and bringing gifts. Spectators were invited to join in the dancing and, at the end, the players would take off their masks to reveal their identities.

I’m working on this mask-based work in response to an invitation for artwork on the theme All the Fun of the Carnival. It will be exhibited for a short period in Shipley Library (22-27 July 2024), after which I would like to bring some of these masks to life through performance work. I’m open to ideas and collaborations!

More images in the Gallery under Masque, Mask, Masking.

Sketching in the dark: jazz and other music

July 16, 2024

I love to attempt to capture some of the energy and dynamism at music gigs, mostly jazz and modern classical. Drawing in the dark means you can’t get drawn into fiddling around with detail. I tend to mostly keep my focus on the subject and movement whilst keeping the pen moving frantically on the page in response to what I observe.

More images can be found in the Gallery under Sketching in the Dark; Jazz and other music.

Isolation Drawings #12

June 22, 2020

Celebrations in lockdown…So many occasions have taken place in a much smaller, quieter manner than any of us dreamt or planned. Gifting artwork is tricky as I’m never sure how it will be received but I’ve taken the plunge in the past few weeks.

My nephew celebrated his 21st birthday at home with his parents, siblings and a takeaway instead of a night out with his mates. An Isolation painting seemed appropriate although maybe he didn’t see it that way, I didn’t get any feedback…

Towards the end of May, Tony & I celebrated the years we’ve been together and the adventures we’ve had. In normal circumstances we’d have a day out and a meal somewhere. This time we waited in for a delivery, had a disappointing takeaway and agreed that we preferred our home-cooked food! Tony opened his gift from me to find Isolation Painting 6. Not a total surprise as he had been around when I was working on it even if he didn’t know it was for him at the time.

My friend Lou’s planned birthday trip to the coast was also thwarted so I broke away from my usual palette to go with her rainbow-filled home. The rainbow rock swaddled in sunshine yellow, surrounded by sea or sky, reminds me that there are positives about the current restrictions on our lives. When lockdown feels like a prison, when its seems our freedom has been taken away, we need to close our eyes, be aware of each breath in and out, feel the sun on our skin or the rain in our hair and know that we are alive.

Isolation Drawings 11

June 21, 2020

All sorts of random marks had been left behind on the newspaper that covered the surface while I was painting. I liked the overlaying of paint on random images and text so pasted bits into my sketch book. Later I used them as a base for further drawings.

Isolation Drawings 10

May 22, 2020

My second entry for Grayson’s Art Club (Channel 4) was for episode 5 on the theme of Home. My video to accompany this submission, whilst it still took several attempts, is not so much of a roller-coaster ride as the previous one and perhaps not quite so melancholic.

Isolation Drawings 9

May 22, 2020

Six and a half weeks into lockdown I submitted one of my Isolation paintings to Grayson’s Art Club on Channel 4. His ethos, is that we can all be creative, there are no rules, no right and wrong, and to do it is good for our mental health. I’m totally with you on that Grayson!

The week’s theme was ‘The View from Your Window’. If you’ve read my previous Isolation Drawings blogs it may not surprise you that the stones are what I now always focus on when I look out the basement window.

The submission had to include a short bit of video about why I made the work and how I found being creative during lockdown. Video-making was a challenge in itself. I had a multitude of attempts, no video editing skills, a lot of swearing and a late realisation that I needed the phone turned 90 degrees. I finally managed to record this take. Earlier versions had birds singing and the sound of a train in the distance. Instead this one features a lot of clattering from inside but I had spent too much time and emotion on it already and the deadline was looming so I just sent it off. Not the best approach and I forgot to make it clear how it linked to the theme.

It didn’t make the cut to get on Grayson’s show but I put thoughts into words even if it was in a chaotic, haphazard manner, so here you go!

Isolation Drawings 8

May 2, 2020

April turns to May. 5 weeks into lock down, 6 weeks since we were told to stop gathering in large numbers. It seems like a life time. We’ve been fortunate to have had many sunny days and I’m out in the garden again but now I’m drawing stones hidden in corners or wedged between pots as well as the ones hidden in holes.

Isolation Drawings 7

May 1, 2020

The longer I stay home, the more I feel life will never resume in any way like that to which I used to be accustomed. I cannot imagine a world in which we gather together, hug friends and family, enjoy live arts events, theatre, music. How can we ever do these things again? How do we come out of this place in which we have been confined? I do not feel the constant despair that I did during the first few weeks of lock down yet I feel a numbness towards the future. It is a place for which I cannot make plans.

Isolation Drawings 6

April 30, 2020

I wanted a deep, dark blueness to this next painting, like a feeling of the great expanse of a warm summer night surrounding me, my stone, the moon.

The painting in the image below (from my Mrs Pool(e) project) was the substrate for it. It’s always a dilemma whether to paint over older things but that’s what I did in this case, working over several days until the original had all but disappeared.

A canvas from You Lived Here Mrs Poole became the substrate for Isolation 3

I paint, draw, wipe, erase. Traces remain. Today is built on yesterday; it changes tomorrow.

Early stage of Isolation 3: Washes of blues covered in charcoal and graphite

Isolation 3: Building up textures and marks.

Isolation 3: Eroding some of the blackness and washing with more blues

Isolation 3: Blues becoming more as I want them but stone still needing more work.

Isolation 3: traces of the original painting showing through.

I kept coming back to it, not entirely happy but eventually I got there. It’s finished.

Isolation Drawings 5

April 22, 2020

Stones in holes. Simple line. No messing around. Sparse.

Isolation Drawings 4

April 20, 2020

Adjusting to life in lock-down I found it really hard to focus on anything. I am trying not to dwell on statistics and politicians’ words because when I do it consumes me, makes my head pound and my body ache. Worry, despair and anger will change nothing and I need to concentrate my energies elsewhere.

Within the imposed physical boundaries of Stay Home, Stay Safe I have no particular plan other than Isolation Drawings. It is becoming part of everyday life.

Isolation Drawings 3

April 13, 2020

The streets are quiet, still and eerie. I am a survivor in a strange, surreal place; an extra in a sci-fi movie that has become reality. Of the few people around some smile, hoping to make a fleeting human contact, whilst others fearfully stare straight ahead.

Even without a lock-down I have hermit-like tendencies. I get nervous about talking to people but that’s by instinct, now it’s by decree. Social distance is obligatory and conversations are at a volume that ensures no privacy. We all have new phrases in our lexicon: self isolation, social distancing, shielding. It all amounts to the same thing: Stay Home, Stay Safe. Somehow we all need to Stay Sane and we have to work out our methods of doing so.

Isolation Drawings 2

April 7, 2020

The weather turned colder, the sun disappeared. I picked up a stone from the garden and took it inside.

Drawing the stone I surrounded it with darkness, the unknown. Was it threatening and intimidating; encompassing and swaddling; or a vast ever-expanding space?

Taking this drawing as a starting point and one of my old paintings as a base, I began working on a larger scale with paint, charcoal, pastel and graphite. I wanted the blackness to have density and depth and shadows of the old painting to be visible through the layers and marks that it were gradually covering it.

Our lives are built on everything that has gone before. We change moment by moment.

The cold, smooth pebble I cradle in my hands turns my gaze into the universe.

Isolation Drawings 1

April 5, 2020

Covid-19. Home is a safe place; home is a prison. We’re in this together; we’re in this alone. Stay home, stay safe, stay sane.

In this period of confinement I needed to find a focus and decided to go into the garden each day to draw whatever I found.

I began drawing individual stones that, some time back, I had placed in the holes of breeze blocks. Different stones, different holes, the same basic situation but each unique. It brought to mind each of us attempting to deal with our own particular isolation, some isolated alone, some isolated with others, each bringing its own set of challenges.

Everything changes; Nothing Stays the Same

September 7, 2018

The unexpected and accidental are often the most interesting. Sometimes an impression is left by one plate on another, creating a faint image on subsequent work.

Discarded off cuts of paper laid out in a patchwork over the large plate resulted in some random prints (below), focusing the view on interesting elements that may have gone unnoticed in the larger, earlier pieces.

Artists editioning prints often score or cut the plate in order to ‘spoil’ it and prevent further prints being taken once the predetermined number has been reached. In contrast I scratch into or cut up the plate as part of a continual change with something new being created out of what has gone before and the plates themselves taking on a sense of history. There's no going back, but that's when interesting things happen, such as when I chopped the large plate into strips.

I moved them around, combined them with other plates, found some Japanese calligraphy paper...

Then I found an 18m roll of paper...

Every Contact Leaves a Trace

August 14, 2018

I have been working in an exploratory manner, taking marks back and forth through different processes, incorporating a variety of materials. As I reuse, rework, and re-appropriate, some marks are eroded, fragmented or lost whilst others evolve to take their place. I may ink and print, photograph, overlay images, photograph again, laser engrave one image onto another and so on. Concealing and revealing, eroding and depositing, I create palimpsests; something bearing traces of an earlier form.

As I work, I am reminded of Edmond Locard’s principle, 'Every contact leaves a trace', upon which forensic science is founded. He proposed that when two surfaces come into contact, each will leave a trace upon the other. For instance, someone breaking into a property may retain tiny fragments of glass on their clothing whilst leaving fibres and fingerprints on the broken pane. Locard was concerned with physical contacts but I extend this to more ethereal, social, psychological and intellectual traces. My life is changed moment by moment by every thought and encounter, by people I meet and even those I don't. I am constantly evolving and will never again be exactly the same person as I am in this present instant. And even this present instant has already gone.

Creating and eroding

August 14, 2018

I have an experimental approach to making art, working with an idea & exploring it through processes and media, often working and reworking images, not knowing quite what the outcome will be. Whilst working on the small X prints I talked about in my previous blog entry, I acquired a large piece of board which someone had abandoned after pasting on a large patch of carborundum grit. This appealed to my sense of traces left behind.

I added two large brush-stroke crosses in glue & grit and initially printed it un-inked with small inked plates laid on top, creating a deeply texture blind embossing much of which is hardly noticeable without an oblique light. As I work into and onto the board between each printing, the original images gradually deteriorate, becoming feint traces of what they once were. It feels as though a history is building up in the plate, through both deliberately made marks and indentations left accidentally by the small plates. As marks are eroded they become part of something new, something different that, in turn, becomes part of a cycle of growth and decay.

X Marks

February 14, 2018

Over the last few months the focus of my art practice has moved from the traces of other people’s lives to a different, yet connected, narrative about the marks that I leave behind.

In the old diaries I had been working with I found X marks. They seemed to represent something but I didn't know what. Their significance has long been lost but they must have had some meaning and purpose to the person who made them.

I started to make my own X marks whilst experimenting with carborundum and drypoint printing, the former giving a really nice gritty grainy texture to the marks, the latter much more scratchy.

Carborundum print (actual size 9 x 6.5cm)

I am making Xs

An X has many connotations
X = yes
X = no
X = wrong
X marks the spot
X = love
X crosses out
X obliterates or maybe it doesn’t – I can still see what’s underneath
X indicates
X invalidates
X is a secret code
X is different every time I make an X
X votes
X = for
X = against
X means different things in different situations and to different people

Carborundum plates ready to either blind emboss (to make an impression without ink) or to ink and print.

I decided to work on a small scale, something I'm not used to doing, and cut the metal plates in to the size of playing cards. I like this as a symbol of the game of chance that we call life; each decision, each thought and encounter is a part of what makes us who we are. we are changing moment by moment. Just as no two prints I make are ever identical, I am never exactly the same person as I ever was before or will ever be again.

Source: http://www.jennyzigzag.co.uk/

Some Type of Legacy

July 21, 2017

We each change the world around us and leaves traces as we go. Our lives affect those of others in the present and in the future; people we know and others who we never even meet. Some of the evidence is physical and obvious whilst other parts are intangible marks made by words, actions and inactions.

Work in progress

In Some Type of Legacy I am painting on canvas which I have stretched on a frame passed on to me, previously used by a friend. Something of her is here, becoming part of something new that I am creating and which, in its turn, becomes part of the past even as I make it.