Special projects
‘Special Projects’ is the area where I park all those things that have been/are quite special to me, but don’t quite fit elsewhere! They include: series’ of made objects (shoes, cicadas, dolls, little + big books etc); work I have undertaken at various international residencies (Mexico, Guatemala, Spain) and drawing projects (My Mother book).
These have been some of my favourite creative immersions.
Papier-mache cicada series/2022
‘Leaf Books’, part of Masters’ degree dissertation, 2020
‘My Mother’, self-published book of drawings, 2023
Published books
I am also a writer and have written 5 non-fiction books - Jobs for the Girls (co-written with Caro Llewellyn), 30-something (about women navigating the decade of their 30’s), Bend of the River (a memoir co-written with my mother) Drink Me (a memoir of a relationship) and Paper Bliss - a how to book based around paper projects.
Throughout the 1990’s, I also illustrated a swathe of cookbooks for well-known Australian chefs.
‘The Covid Chronicles’: lockdown project for instagram/
self-published book/2020
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Image from ‘The Covid Chronicles’
-
![]()
Cover for book version
Shoe Stories
‘Shoe Stories’ began as a simple lockdown/Covid project. Trying to work out how to distract myself by crafting a papier-mache shoe, the project grew into a long love affair with ‘paper shoes’ - each one telling a story of or for its recipient.
The process became a way to creatively escape… and so it was that gardens, the sea and far away landscapes featured highly.
Creative Immersion:
My aim was to ‘release’ these objects back to where I’d found them, keeping only the drawings, little books and pigment paintings that I’d done.
During this time, it also felt important to create something unique/bespoke for each of my fellow residents/hosts, Much thought was put into this process. Creating and bequeathing became a new kind of rhythm.
For an inveterate collector of things, experiences, people etc, this was a tentative step towards doing things differently.
Spanish residency, 2024.
My residency in the hills around Andalusia was a real surprise to my sensibilities. The earth, the sky, the way the weather encircled us in the large stone house on the hill, were all unfamiliar to me.
Apart from attempting to grind my own pigments from the earth, I needed a ‘big picture’ project. I decided to set about addressing my desire to always ‘take it with you’. With the recent death of my father, I had begun to wonder how we might keep ahold of things that mattered to us. How could I keep some of Spain with me? What could I reasonably ‘take’ - and, perhaps, give?
I decided to collect ‘10 things a day’, bring them back to the studio and draw them. This offered me a process-led examination of found objects that became the foundation to my stay.
Mexican Residency, 2022
I find Mexico irresistible.
I have completed two residencies there. My most recent was in Puebla in 2022, and it was a game-changer. What creatively emerged could never have happened anywhere else…I stayed in an extraordinary red + white house, complete with quotes emblazoned on the walls (‘The capacity of representation is the measure of domination’/Theodor W. Adorno), was challenged, frustrated and confronted by compulsory readings and residency meetings with a complex, authoritarian academic.
‘Coming down’ from these liaisons, I’d wander the local streets, in awe of the colour and life I witnessed. Amassing a collection of cheap souvenirs and household items purchased along my route, I envisioned an artwork around the issue of representation that is still working its way through me.
Of course, there’s much more to this story…and one day I shall tell it properly.
The red residency house
The residency house
The red residency
The studio
Stairway to…
View from top floor of residency over Puebla
WIP
WIP
Some of my residency WIP
Some of my residency WIP
Playing with colour WIP
residency WIP
Paintings of ‘Mascaras’
Quotes on the residency walls
Painting + journal drawing day 1
Beautiful brooms
Shop cornucopia
All things bright and beautiful…
Too much is never enough…
An outing…
Shop window overload
Local life…
Braiding it all together
Pomp and ceremony
Pink + green (fave colours)
In the Pink
Pink + Green