Why do I make art?

'Getting creative' feeds different parts of me at different times in different ways. Living in a creative way is in my nature. It's something I've always gravitated towards but, until recently, never really considered 'why'. The following examples offer some insight:

To regulate my emotions & ground myself

For example, I'll work on a specific type of artwork to help me regulate my breathing in order to calm myself when feeling stressed. This type of work tends to be colour based & requires me to work with my hands. It may include paper-folding; flicking through magazines to find colours; pushing pins into card. It forces me to slow down and connect with the materials I've chosen to work with. It's an approach I have honed specifically for when I'm feeling overwhelmed. This type of artwork gets me out of my head & helps me to ground myself.

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To untangle & process thoughts, & communicate ideas

My mind can sometimes feel like a knotted ball of wool that needs to be untangled in order for me to see clearly. Combining the practice of making visual art with writing things down, helps me to untangle and organise my thoughts so that I can process what I'm experiencing, articulate an idea or communicate a story.

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To show love

Creating something unique for the special people in my life has always been my way of showing I care.

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To affect my environment

I want to immerse myself in an environment that brings me peace and makes me smile. I sometimes need reminding that I have some control over what I surround myself with and that, to an extent, I can create my ideal surroundings to nourish the senses; to inspire…

A couple of years ago, I was gifted a cutting from a 40-year-old Monstera plant. This Spring, after it had been sitting in water and growing aerial roots for 2 years, it began to sprout new green shoots. It was the first time I had propagated a plant, and the process both humbled & excited me.

Firstly, I loved that I was given the cutting by a neighbour whom I'd never met before (yay for community!). Secondly, I was reminded that nature finds a way to thrive - wherever & whenever it can.

I love to be surrounded by plants. I find them calming. But they are expensive to buy. This led me to consider other ways I could have plants around me without purchasing them. Propagating is one way - a beautiful way - but it takes time! Creating artworks that surround me is another. So, I'm doing both. I got thinking about environments that would benefit from an internal garden, but which may not be a suitable environment in which to grow.

A space with no light, and no one dedicated to looking after plants; a space that does not allow plants - in order to prevent the spread of bacteria and fungi - these places would still benefit from the effect that plants have on their environment. It's a culmination of these things that inspired this project.

Now that I've created my first artworks, I'm looking for a space in which to display more - playing with scale in order to draw attention. The idea is that I affect my surroundings, using mainly what I find around me, in order to create an immersive space that brings calm & tranquillity and feels a little otherworldly.

This first piece I have created uses the old leaves cut from the original Monstera cutting.

My next step is to make more and more of this style artwork, get people in the space and see how they react to it. From there, I dream of getting communities involved with the creative process in order to develop the project and explore ways for these immersive spaces to benefit others.

In 2012, when I started looking into my family tree, all I knew was that I wanted to find out more about where - and who - I come from.

When I found census reports and naturalisation documents that included the signatures of my ancestors, I ran my finger over the letters, in an attempt to get closer to them.

As I discovered more about when they arrived in England; where they lived when they arrived; their professions - I wanted to learn more about their lives, and what brought them here in the first place. This led me on a history lesson of what was going on in Eastern Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.

The more I learnt, the more I wanted to get to know each person - but as amazing as it is to find out facts about my ancestors lives, I also felt hugely frustrated that I knew nothing about their daily routines and their individual natures. I wanted to know what they ate for breakfast, what their sense of humour was like - all the details that help you connect with another person. I wanted to be privy to the intimacies & intricacies of the humans that I came from. But, understandably, this isn’t what’s recorded in government-collected data, and so I sat with my frustration.

It’s incredibly sad that these bland but beautiful moments are not always recorded, or may only come to the surface - and be written in ink - only when something tragic and unspeakable takes place.

After much digging and connecting with older, distant relatives, my wish was granted - and with it came pain. Less than a year after two generations of the Angel family escaped the Polish pogroms by moving to England in 1886, a family member was poisoned and died. She was heavily pregnant at the time.

Although it’s now easy to find out more about the murder in old newspapers, and Old Bailey transcripts, I’ve learnt that, at the time, family members were forbidden to talk about it. This led me to consider what support this family - who spoke only Yiddish and had recently arrived in Victorian England - received from their community. How did they cope? We can only guess the answers to the questions about their unique experiences. What impact could their experiences have on future generations?

And what if this occurred today? Would we handle the healing process any differently? What have we, as a society, learnt in the past hundred years about coping with trauma, and finding a way to not pass it on?