the emerging motif

In 2004 I was working virtually full-time teaching, but carried a journal with me religiously and would get it out  in any meeting I was stuck in and begin putting things down. Simple forms and lines... not thinking consciously for the most part. I let the pen be moved by my hand as if the hand was doing the thinking and meanwhile I dipped in and out of the talk from the meetings.

somewhere in that time I put down the lines that became eventually this form...

and later was put into hundreds of compositions small and large it was such a persistent motif

After a couple of years I was so uncomfortable with this compelling motif which felt like an incomprehensible interloper that I tried to pack it away ... but it would NOT leave!

By 2008 I realised it was here to stay so I no longer fought it and gave it space to emerge in my

work whenever. It evolved into the fully fledged 'homage to the seed' project the following year seemingly as if the motif had been heralding it all the long... seeds within a pod!

I found other drawings from around the time of the ones above in 2004 that demonstrate this clearly. This is why I have so much respect for journals as a way to track the emergent ideas.

Last night I worked in another concertina book and the form that wanted to live in there was once again this ovoid pod form. The feeling I get as I work on this abstracted form is that of something living in me that has to be put out into the light of day... its feels like a story that needs to be told... I actually get that sense of urgency when I work with this motif...even now... in 2012... that's 8 years on from when it first emerged.

This really feels like such a mysterious element in my work...  reminding one that compelling forces are at work within us all and we do have to pay attention!