I discovered this method of working during a long hot summer in Istanbul grounded by the pandemic. It’s normal for me to travel with a compacted version of my studio, geared towards making mixed media and oil pastel drawings. During one late night session I decided to break my process into two. One slow, deliberate and well thought out, the other vigorous and destructive yet decisive. The idea was to allow my two types of creative urge to meet in the middle somehow and create balanced, realised drawings. So often I had created work that was energetic and inspired but vague. At other times I had laboured carefully but produced stiff unanimated work. By combining these energies or methods on the same page something that had both depth and life arrived. I’ve developed this idea much further, seeing it both in terms of the Hindu ideas of Shiva & Shakti and the Hermetic so called ‘7th principle’. Both these realms of thought divide all creation into a balance of masculine and feminine energy. Shakti the goddess of feminine care and birth, Shiva the creator through destruction.
