When an idea is finished I always find it hard to remember where it even began, it feels as if the idea has died, reborn and been reinvented over and over. What I do remember about creating this piece back in 2021 is that I had been illustrating commission album covers one after the other and it had been a while since I had the time to create something personal just for myself. Despite loving being able to bring someones else’s idea and music to life through an image, Album covers always have to be a perfectly square shaped canvas, I had started to feel quite literally boxed in and was aching to try something different, personal and out my comfort zone.
I approached this artwork in an entirely new way by going through my sketchbook and gathering all the notes of the thoughts and feelings I had scribbled down throughout the past year. Adding my then current feelings of being creatively blocked, ideas on what being mixrace means, fears of the uncertainty of the future and continuing to relive past mistakes etc. Without thinking I just freestyle doodled rough sketches of these ideas and feelings into visual concepts, adding notes and markings that probably only make sense to me. So I ended up with a really rough kind of visual diary of the past year. The next stage would be turning these rough sketches into fully formed drawings. The next month I see as a opportunity to revisit this way of working and will be creating a continuation of this first piece.