After moving house to the Yorkshire countryside, a little over a year ago, I found myself temporarily without a studio, which is why the old garage behind the house is now being expanded and converted into my future workplace. Having to temporarily work from the house meant of course that I had to find a relatively mess-free medium to work in, so no sculpting for a while… When I visited Liz Foster at Arnup Studios in April last year and saw her beautiful soft pastel drawings, it made me want to try the medium myself.
My drawings started out quite sketch-like, then became more precise, defined. Years ago, I used to paint in oils a lot and I found I could apply a similar technique to the drawings: working from dark to light, which is why I prefer to work on dark/brown paper. I noticed that because of the clay modelling, my awareness of volumes in a space had improved, which now also translated to two-dimensional space, and which in turn helped me with drawing human anatomy. Similarly, working in stained glass made me appreciate the importance of warm versus cool colours when it comes to depth-perception in a two-dimensional space and, of course, the general mood of a work.
This made me realise how useful it is to work interdisciplinary sometimes, as each medium will teach you something that you might be able to apply when working in another one, and also how facing limitations can sometimes point you towards things you might not have tried otherwise.
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