Little
Not every adventure ends up on a canvas.
Sometimes it becomes a little film instead.
These tiny stories have been made with friends, students and fellow creatives, each one beginning with nothing more than an idea and a willingness to play.
Some are thoughtful.
Some are wonderfully daft.
All of them remind me that creativity grows best when it's shared.
The films may be little...
The adventures never are.
Talkinn
Some of the best ideas begin with a conversation.
Talkinn was a collaborative project created with my friend Carrie Clarke while we were studying at Norwich University of the Arts. Together we explored how talking, listening and making can quietly shape one another. This film became part of our final GRADFEST exhibition, celebrating the journey every creative idea takes before it finds its feet.
Beeston Bumping
One summer's evening, photographer Suzanne Reid and I climbed to the top of Beeston Bump with a camera and no real plan.
The wind did the rest.
A tiny film about friendship, freedom and those moments that remind us how good it feels to simply be alive.
Changing Minds
This project began with a old medical document books in the Norfolk record office.
Inside were photographs and handwritten notes belonging to patients admitted to the Norfolk County Asylum in 1886. As I turned each page, I found myself wondering who they were beyond the words written about them.
The installation combined painting, film and original drawings, exploring hope, humanity and the quiet importance of being remembered.
Sometimes art doesn't ask us to admire.
Sometimes it simply asks us to care.
Postcard from Here
We were one of the first groups of students to begin university during the pandemic.
Our brief was to create a postcard with a message in just one hour. The irony wasn't lost on me... we were making postcards at a time when we couldn't really go anywhere, and we barely knew what one another looked like behind our masks.
So instead of writing a message, I made a tiny animated flipbook about the wonderfully muddled business of trying to think of one.
The finished piece, Not Enough Smiles by Miles, became a gentle nod to a time when smiles were often hidden, but still very much needed.
Sometimes thinking outside the box begins by wondering why the box is there at all.
Face to Face
Created during my time at university, this film grew from a simple question...
What matters most?
As the pandemic kept families apart, I found myself piecing together old photographs of the faces that had shaped my own. Looking through generations of family portraits, I realised that even those no longer with us had never really disappeared.
They were still here...
In our features.
Our expressions.
Our stories.
Perhaps that's one of the quiet gifts of family. We carry a little of one another wherever we go.
Frottage
I like to think every tree, stone and weathered surface has a story tucked away inside it.
Frottage is simply my way of asking if they'd like to share it.
As the charcoal travels across the paper, hidden patterns slowly emerge, revealing textures, shapes and tiny surprises that have been there all along. Sometimes I soften my focus, and suddenly something completely unexpected appears.
It's one of the gentlest reminders I know...
that the world still has plenty of stories left to tell.
Oranges in a Green Bowl
Some paintings don't reveal themselves all at once.
They prefer to unfold slowly.
By turning each version into a little flipbook, I can watch an idea finding its feet, changing almost imperceptibly from one page to the next.
It's a gentle reminder that, just like people, paintings often become more revealing the longer we spend in their company.
Oranges from A to B
Every time I return to the same image, I leave a little more certainty behind.
Somewhere along the way I stop trying to control the outcome, and the painting begins to lead instead.
That's the sweet spot I keep searching for.
This second journey took an unexpected detour through digital interference, revealing possibilities I could never have planned.
Perhaps ideas enjoy surprising us just as much as we enjoy discovering them.