As someone who started out with what felt like no practice of my own, I looked around for people in the contemporary art world who were already doing the sort of things that I had in my mind. As I experimented with different mediums and processes I naturally found other artists who acted as guides. I started to build a world of inspiration, which evolved and grew as my interests did. Once I became fascinated by one artist, it naturally lead me on to another. The work which was inspiring me spread out in a subterranean rhizome (Deleuze and Guattari, 2013) underneath my own emerging practice. What follows are some of the artists and works that have inspired me the most, whether it be an idea, a process, a format of sharing, a movement or a feeling. They are in no particular order, other than how they flow into my mind!
Liliane Lijn – ‘I want to feel alive in my work. I want it to breathe. I want its surface to be as a skin, translucent, porous, emitting the fine moist heat of the living. (Liliane Lijn: Arise Alive | Tate Accessed: 2/8/25).
Fay Godwin (and, in particular, her collaboration with Ted Hughes in Elmet/Remains of Elmet) – Godwin, F. (1989) The Scepter’d Isle. London: Souvenir Press.
Godwin, F. (1986) The Secret Forest of Dean. Bristol: Redcliffe Press.
Godwin, F. (1985) Land. London: William Heinemann Ltd. Hughes, T., and Godwin, F. (1979) Elmet. London: Faber and Faber.
Peter Ward – ‘You are not living on the earth, you are the earth.’ (Ward, 2023, pg.6)
Richard Long – Long, R. (1997) A Walk Across England. London: Thames And Hudson.
Jean Dubuffet – Nairne, E. (2021) Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty. London: Prestel.
Rob St John – St. John, R. (2022) Oro. Scotland: Blackford Hill.
Rachel Poulton – Poulton, R. (2024) Unseen 4: Chanctonbury. Sussex: Unseen Press.