My email inbox has become a strange and conflicting space. The rejections from the many applications I made in January have started to come in, making opening emails a sad, challenging, and complex thing. But then I get an email from the Aesthetics Art Prize asking for further details or offering me the chance to talk about my work and my inbox is suddenly a place of joy. It’s confusing. It’s discouraging. It’s encouraging. It needs strength, which I can’t always conjure up for myself. Thankfully I don’t have to.
Yesterday my wonderful friend Sonya took me to her incredible fields above Zennor. I’ve written about them before, after I’d spent the day planting trees. Sonya is gently and lovingly rewilding these fields, bringing trees, wildflowers, leaving the grass to grow long and thick, encouraging biodiversity and life to flourish.
Standing up there, in the heart of Cornwall, you can catch glimpses of both coastlines, look out over mining ruins, and bathe under a huge sky. Places like this, places with the power to heal, and the potential to be healed, are why I make the art I make. That I am lucky enough to have access to these fields is a blessing. They are a sacred place, a place of women’s magic, and a place from which strength can be drawn. I drew on it yesterday, on the fresh buds and leaves growing on tiny saplings, and on the earth beneath me.
My inbox might be a confusing emotional whirlwind right now, but at least there are places out there in the world worth making art about. The Northern Lights put on an incredible show earlier this week, and I dreamt of sitting outside my van looking up at them, so I guess I best get back to building. Tomorrow, I plan to ignore my inbox for a while, open my van doors, and get out the tools for the first time this year. I will let you know how it goes.