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‘Eco
Art’ cards, was born after a tropical
storm in the Caribbean. The beach on the Atlantic coast of Nevis, an
island where I return each year to holiday, was awash with bottles,
buckets and fishing paraphernalia. Doing my bit for the community, I
collected the litter and was astonished by the variety of brightly
coloured plastic rubbish and textures of the rope netting. In my studio
later I washed and cut up the flotsom and jetsom into manageable pieces
which I then glued to a wooden board.
My first collage “Sunset” remains my favourite
because I
felt I had discovered something new in the making of it.
My obsession with collecting ‘found objects’ has
been with
me ever since I can remember. The overlooked and the abandoned speak to
me. It interests me why a broken black umbrella reminds me of an oil
slicked bird washed ashore and why a rusting wheel can give off energy
even though its travels are over. I am always looking beyond and behind
at the meaning of things. The titles of my pictures and their happy
fleeting simplicity belie their environmental whisperings. What you see
in the pictures of the beaches is what it should look like without the
litter- the irony is that I am using the discarded rubbish from the
beaches to make these idyllic images.
The collages take a long time to make individually and require frequent
visits to the beach to find a certain colour to complete a picture. The
present collection of eight pictures has started selling through
galleries, so the initial excitement is still burning within me. The
cards are a special reminder of how beautiful the world can be if we
look after it. |
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