Moving inquiry
I started my professional animation career as a cel painter – essentially a paint-by-numbers activity multiplied by the hundreds. Once the world became digital, I barely picked up a paintbrush for almost 30 years. I love paint, and I love painting. I love colour, and I love thinking about a million things as I paint, while focusing on the singularity of the still image – so vastly different to animating.
Sketching is everything. The foundation, the end point, the development, the in-between. I teach sketching and drawing, and I also learn it. Every day. Ways of seeing, ways of doing, ways of capturing and expressing. One of my ex-grads runs chinese brush painting classes and I practice when I can. It teaches you to be in the moment, focus, and commit.
Fascinated with botanical illustration, and botanics in general, since I was about 10 years old, (thanks to my botanist/landscape architect adopted mother), I’ve been exploring a variety of techniques, subjects, ideas, and contexts, and creating works drawing on the natural environment – usually depicting elements of wherever I happen to find myself, and whatever’s in my field of view.
The animated sequence forms part of the introductory scene in the Coming Through project where our main character discovers she is pregnant and, after some initial trepidation, she does a wild naked dancecelebrating her fecund glory. The entire ‘pregnancy’ lasts for only one minute of screen time.
The Hecates Sisters symbolise a universal experience of femaleness; the ‘Babe’ – signifying the ideal of womanhood – innocence, ingenuousness, unfettered sexiness; the ‘Broad’, of birth, motherhood, adapted identity; and the ‘Biddy’—the crone of knowledge, wrinkles and dismissal. In ancient cultures, Hecate represented the original holy trinity, holding sway over heaven, earth and the underworld as maiden, matron and crone accordingly.
A wonderful long residency in Provence with NGCreative was an inspirational time to sketch, doodle, meditate in the olive groves, and immerse myself even more in the south of France – with plenty of wine and cheese surrounded by other glorious artists. More to come
‘Colourful useful things’ could well describe me, and these cheery terracotta pots have been a thread in my life since the mid-80s, when the animation studio I was working for closed down and I had lots of leftover pots of paint, lots of spare time, a penchant for growing plants, and an impetus to create something fun and practical. Fast forward 30-odd years and …
