Title: Hummingbird 1
Year: 2021
Media: Watercolour paints with clear gloss varnish seal and finishing sprays
Size: 29.7 x 42 cm (framed)

This piece is one of the first of a series I call ‘Fantasy Land’. In which I explore my love and passion of intense vibrant colours, the textures, marks, blending and bleeding effects I can create during the physical process of creating. ‘Fantasy Land’ emerged from my subconscious autonomic artistic meditation, which I dove into, to escape, during my illness/recovery. Art has and always is, my only therapy, my voice, my escape, my fantasy and this is my ‘Fantasy Land’. Parallel to this project I have an art journal which is essentially my diary, my truth, thoughts, emotions, honest, raw, brutal reality. I release all of this in image form and later, can look back at it and articulate how and what it was I was thinking and feeling when I created the images.
Simultaneously, I needed to escape from that brutal reality, which is how I found my ‘Fantasy Land’ series. My happy place. My alternate reality, with no rules, where anything goes, where my mind does not think, and my creativity just takes over. Images appear to me as I draw or paint into the colourful explosions, with no real planning or intentional preconceived or rehearsed compositions. It’s just like when you were a child and you lay on the grass with your friends looking up at the clouds, studying the shapes until the forms suddenly start jumping out at you, a dog, a dragon, etc. The creative imagination takes over; ‘Fantasy Land’ unfolds its own imagery, its own magic, and its own realm of reality, serenity, and beauty.

‘Hummingbird 1 - Poem’

My wings are spread,
But the wind knocks me down,
I’m struggling to fly,
Fear pulls me down,

Philosophy and poetry,
Examine me,
So emotionally,
Who was it,
I used to be?
Who was it,
You used to see?
Who is it,
That you say is me?
Why can't I see,
That version of me?
The one everyone else can see?
I try to change the things in me,
Which I feel are wrong or damaged in me,
But what if all those parts of me,
Make me,
Me,
All of me,
The honest,
True,
Real version of me?

If I kept it all?
All those parts of me?
The broken parts of me?
The – not working so good – parts of me?
The true, honest, raw, bruised version of me?
And I learned to accept all of me?
To appreciate all of me?
To love all of me,
Would I soar through the colourful skies again?
Would I fly high in the notion,
Of colourful love and creative devotion?