I’ve got some exciting news about a new project that I’ve been focused on developing over the last 4 months. If you saw my solo exhibition in 2023 (either in the real or on my video tour), you will have spotted an area showing a few pieces from a natural dyed clothing collection, with prints inspired by the art work. I am creating sustainable, ethical, designed, sourced and manufactured in the UK, clothing brand, SONNET by Sarah Poland. (This has since been rebranded to SARAH POLAND due to JD Sports objecting to the use of the word SONNET. They have an in-house, fast fashion, sports wear brand called SONNETI.)
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I've got a little box of watercolour tubes that I've had sitting around for a few years. My father-in-law gave them to me, his father was a painter. I, or perhaps they, have been waiting for the right time.
I've found it difficult to get motivation moving these last two weeks. It is far from a usual problem. Perhaps there's the overwhelm of moving house and trying to clear a pathway into my studio where things have been strewn amidst the chaos. Plus the bliss of finally being in a house and wanting to slack out on the sofa.
I did something I've often done when I don't know how to get started. I went to the sea. I packed my special off-piste snowboarding rucksack - used for day long adventures. It helps me to create intention of letting go and exploring what comes up. Off to find a wild, windswept, isolated beach I did.
I packed a little portable set of watercolours. Perhaps the time is right now to explore watercolour but…note to self to not drift too far into the allure of what they can do - the pooling, the reticulation - not make 'watercolour paintings' per se but to use them in my own way. For this, they seem a good quick sketching tool.
The morning started with a thick freezing fog at home, the journey to the sea opened out and the long steep walk down brought a pool of sunshine to where I positioned my belongings on a flat boulder.
The day was beautiful.
The sea was calm, small waves dolloped the shoreline dragging pebbles away with them. Such a beautiful sounds that makes you sit very still and Listen. Out at sea cloud was low and colours were limited to gorgeous greys and aqua of the small cresting waves.
By the end of the day I was watching the freezing fog roll in and envelop the beach.
Play the above video to watch waves dolloping onto the shore in fog.
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Studio journal 3
Back in 2002 I went to Western Canada to meet a great friend of mine, to snowboard as she finished her season and to travel together up the West coast. We stopped a night or two in Tofino, B.C. I wasn’t sure at the time why I didn’t join her on a whale watching boat trip, but I drifted into a lovely bookshop, sat on the floor to browse a shelf and came across this wonderful book, ‘Women Of The Beat Generation’, by Brenda Knight. Actually, it pretty much jumped out at me.
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What I saw in 1993 was an exhibition by American painter Robert Ryman. Known as the ‘painter of white paintings’, he is one of the foremost abstract artists of his generation. The influence that this one exhibition had was so profound it still resonates deeply today.
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I’ve been making oak gall ink since I discovered it’s possibility in 2010 and last year I started to broaden my palette. These particular works include eucalyptus leaf, avocado skin, ivy berry and oak gall ink. I have chosen these because they rank as the most permanent of natural colours and also because they feature either in my garden, my kitchen or are native wild plants (sustainably picked of course).
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