A Visit from some York St John Students

Left to right: Alex, Natasha, Fletcher and Sasha

Life is incredibly serendipitous sometimes; on the day that I had finally reclaimed my studio at home I had an email from Natasha, a student at York St John's college, asking if she and some of her peers could come over for a visit!

Previously, the studio at home had been impassable - a mix of left overs from the anti fracking campaign and general stuff from home that had just been chucked in there as I simply didn't have time to deal with it all was piled up and you could not get through the space safely!

Anyway, today I was ready with soup for lunch to keep them going, a tidy studio and work laid out for them to see.  They were a lovely bunch of people and it was interesting to hear about their own work as well as to show them mine, even though I had to explain that there is very little recent work to show them because of the time it is taking to recover from our campaign and get my head back into a place where I actually feel able to make new work.  I am not a massive sketch book user but they were all interested in looking at the ones I do have - I also have a goodly collection of empty ones; you never know, I may even fill in a few of these soon!

But I am ready!  I have 2 very large paintings started some years ago that I aim to finish this year as well as complete the 3D pieces I started when I was on the AA2A scheme.

To get myself back into the work making mode, I have been attending some printmaking workshops and I will do another post about those shortly.

It was nice to be able to talk to these students about my work and to feel part of the art community again; I have really missed it.