I think I’ve got my artistic mojo back! Time will tell if anybody else agrees but right now I am feeling in a good place. I have spent the last week or so trying to cut out all the distractions, trying to quiet all those negative, anxious thoughts and instead focus on creating. Of course the outside world has continued to be a source of anxiety and fear so I decided to be kind to myself and set aside pushing any boundaries until a happier time.

Instead I took two decisions upfront. Firstly I decided to work with a colour family I developed several years ago and used in my Dunure series of works. At the time our oldest son was in a very dark place and life was the hardest we have ever known. The colour palette was inspired by the scrubby beach at Dunure, Scotland on a grey, stormy November day and the series was a reflection of the effect of place on my mental well being. I had hoped that I would never return to this series and this colour palette but here we are.

Secondly I decided to work with circles and specifically broken or fragmented circles. I tend to call my work ‘abstract’ but the reality is that I like to make marks that relate to my inspiration. Inspiration seems like the wrong word in this case but of course this new work is a response to the virus. Small envelopes of protein that invade our bodies, multiple and corrupt our cells. That separate us from our loved ones.

Of course I have been using breakdown printing to create my fabrics - my studio equivalent of comfort eating. And I have been using bondaweb to fuse fabrics together as my patience levels are not high enough to be piecing curved edges right now. But I think I am getting somewhere. And I’m going to stick at it for a while.

Which means no new fabric packs on the website for another week - sorry.

Stay safe, stay well, Leah