Make your mark

Hi Everyone,

I’m thinking a lot about making marks at the moment. Marks on paper and cloth in this case, but I can’t help muse about the drive we humans have to make or leave our mark in the wider sense. Or not leave a mark when it comes to thinking about the environment!

I recently visited Hereford Cathedral when I was intrigued at the small graffiti scratched into the tomb of Sir Richard Pembridge – one of the earliest knights of the Garter. He died in 1375. What makes someone have to scratch into a marble helmet like this, I wonder?

I’m also on the lookout for marks in walls like these.

They are intriguing and now I’ve tuned into them, well you know, I can’t help seeing them everywhere! Apparently Yorkshire stone canal locks and house kerbs sport these stone mason marks to prove their work. I like the mystery of marks I can’t read or understand, I use a lot in my work in the form of asemic writing and using texts I can’t read. I think it’s because they represent the fact that I’m saying something but I don’t need you (or even me) to know exactly what – they, like other marks carry the essence and memory of the moment for the artist and that is enough.

I’ve the pleasure of taking part in Lorna Crane’s ‘Perfectly Imperfect’ on-line course. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on the receiving end of a course like this and we all need a top-up of new inspiration and learning from time to time.

With me wanting to stretch into more gestural marks on cloth and paper, this is a brilliant fit. Fibre Arts Take Two produce some great quality courses. Lorna is a lovely tutor and puts a lot into engaging with everyone in the group.

These are some of the first marks made with brushes from found objects in the landscape:

Here are some layers of washes and marks: I hope they invoke the feeling of stone walls, walking through fields of grass, big skies and the hills of West Yorkshire.

I’m also pivoting to and fro as I like to, with other work I’m doing. I’m making some cloths for another project and whilst I started these before the course, some of the brush marks will make an appearance in my cloths as I make more. The first cloth-marks come from my love of stone and mirror recent paintings. I can now see how they all relate to each other which is hugely satisfying.

The marks and subject of the colours will change as I make more cloths – at least that’s my intention. I feel lost without something to hand-stitch at my side on an evening and this project will ensure I have stitchy companions for a while. 😊

What marks do you see turning up in your work?

I’m super excited to be retiring soon and in another way, I’m leaving with a feeling that I have been able to make a mark there, too. It’s time for someone else to take up the mantle for early years and drive things forwards at what is probably the most challenging time anyone has known. The providers we work with don’t have good working conditions and yet care for and educate children at the most important stage of a child’s life. It also saddens me greatly that creativity and the arts are being squeezed out and simply not recognised for how life-giving they are and how they can open up access to any academic subject for many children.

We are all drawn to making our mark….. all different ways of saying ‘look, this is me, I was here’. Creativity is delightful, demanding, intriguing, wonderful and eternally asks ‘what if….?’

Stay curious – be a question mark! 😄