From "Creatures and Tricksters" catalogue, 2008:
In 2008 I decided to allow myself
some time to experiment with the simple and
fluid media of acrylic inks and charcoal,
without regard to colour, brushwork, texture
or composition, in order to give my
imagination the freest possible rein.
Being self-taught in the first place,
rather than being perceived as a disadvantage,
was for once to be a bonus.
What started as an exercise in loosening
up surprisingly quickly took on a life of
its own, as various tribes of animals and
other creatures started inhabiting my work.
They originate in random patterns generated
by wax and ink, generously and vigourously
applied to paper. Then looking, dreaming,
and looking again, until an image, a feeling,
or a word - I often do not know which is
first - emerges. From then on the image,
the title and myself are locked into a
sometimes happy, more often fractious,
menage a trois. Often working under the
baleful or mocking stare of one of my
creations, I add, scrape away, illustrate
here, erase there, accentuate a line
here, turn a shape into an eye or a paw
there....and frequently the unfortunate
creature ends up in shreds in the bin..
This role of accident and chance in drawing
out images from the subconscious has been
a central thread in my work. It was there
in the early paintings on silk, reappeared
in printmaking when I turned to the
semi-abstract landscapes of my monotypes,
and now forms the basis of the current work.
As one always circles and ultimately
returns to one's fundamental themes
and obsessions, I have come back to
and accepted to work within the limitations
of chance.
Languages have been another central thread
in my life, a passion I have retained since
my early training as a linguist. The titles
I have given these drawings are important
and form an integral part of the process
of generating the work. As an image is
born out of the random patterns, it claims
its name; the name then becomes part of its
genesis; later, if its mood shifts, it may
call for another title. Language draws out
shapes from the visually inchoate and feeds
new meaning back into it. In these pieces
language/thought and the physical shape
evolve in tandem, one nudging on the other.
Impossible at times to say which was first,
the word or the shape.
This work draws much of its atmosphere from my
rural Bavarian childhood with its superstitions
and tales of temperamental and mischievous spirits,
and the many flitting, half-seen, half-imagined
creatures with which a child's imagination peoples
the forests and dark barns. Mercurial and never
entirely benevolent or malevolent, those perhaps
inspired the mood of ambivalence in many of these
pieces: who is threatening and who the threatened,
who the tamer or the tamed, the master or the
underdog? There is shape-shifting and ambiguity,
making gentle, innocuous rabbits and birds
sinister and aggressive, while rats and
devils become timid or dreamy. There is
religion in various irreverent guises, and
there are many dancers and musicians. Many of
these 'animals' are half-human or showing human
traits, thus fusing human awareness and
emotions with an animal body and animal spirits.
Lastly, this imagery is also remarkably
evocative of the Native American "trickster"
tradition referred to in the title of this volume,
with its wily animal protagonists. After
being made aware of this, I visited the USA
to take up a residency at the Virginia Centre
for Creative Arts in 2009. While there,
reading those trickster tales and exploring a
landscape full of unfamiliar sounds, smells,
light, and a wonderfully strange fauna,
provided the kind of magical environment
that helped produce much of the motley
universe in this volume.