A poem is like a plant in that it takes root in me, in my consciousness and, staying there, it grows, fades, dies back, lies dormant and then returns, reemerging, to bring renewed pleasure and understanding…

Materiality has always been central to my practice, which has evolved into a deep investigation into the spatial and tactile qualities of poetry. Considering words themselves as a material, I explore the textural layers that I encounter within poems, translating these into drawings, paintings, collages and mixed media sculptural forms that range from books and ladders to unique forms that I have named ‘Poem-Houses’.

Listen to presences inside poems,
Let them take you where they will.
Follow those private hints,
and never leave the premises.
― Rumi

These ‘Poem-Houses’ evolved as a result of my experience of poems as being ‘things’ and feeling very much like ‘rooms’ in which I am able to spend time exploring the possibilities of mood and meaning that are part of the atmosphere I find there and around whose delicate edges insights and new or alternative meanings begin to suggest themselves.

My relationship with poems and my responses to them result in what feels like a kind of visual refrain – an echo, of sorts – and in responding to what I have found by means of a process that feels to be almost archaeological, I seem to be connecting with where my career began, as an archaeological illustrator.

As my process evolves, the raw material that I have discovered inside a poem transmutes into and gradually becomes a delicate interweaving of my experience. Such an unfettering of my ‘attitude of mind’, as evoked by Kathleen Jamie in her poem, The Bower has encouraged me to navigate perceived boundaries between disciplines. By ‘allowing’ myself to work with media such as porcelain clay and videography with which to create ceramic vessels and short video pieces, through which I experience a liberating feeling of ‘flow’, my natural curiosity has become piqued by all that I do not know…

By engaging with increasing depth in the practice of painting with inks and watercolours, it is my intention to continue a process of distillation of my personal experiences through further cultivation of:

• The practice of attention – close, observant looking as a form of mindful, spiritual practice.
• A sense of deep interconnectedness – highlighting the mutual dependence between human beings and the wider cosmos.
• A sense of vastness of mind – exploring the porous boundary between the self and the natural world, rather than seeing humans as being separate from nature.

Taking all that I have gleaned through my experience of attuning directly to poetry and to the natural world, while making art by drawing and painting outside, ‘en plein air’ has filled me with a renewed sense of wonder, as described beautifully by the poet, Stanley Kunitz:

…I would find a leaf or a stone in the underbush and have the sensation that nobody else had seen quite this same thing before…

– Stanley Kunitz, in The Wild Braid

Read Brigid’s Biography here »