What have you been up to during my isolation? Eating lots of delicious food that’s for sure. Believe it or not, I have been super busy with my time. I have 4 children that I have been ‘trying’ to help with their schooling, which takes most of my time actually and often leaves me utterly exhausted. I’m also a part time art teacher, so I have been creating and delivering classes online, which without a doubt is the more positive part of my day rather than trying to teach my own kids. When I have time for myself, I find solace and fulfillment with drawing. As I spent much of my time before isolation drawing the rock formations and landscape from observation along the Mornington Peninsula, I have enough to work with that I can continue to draw more drawings from the original ones. I love further dissecting, overlapping, and breaking down elements of my work. At the moment, I’m working with pastels and find them messy and wonderful. Working from memory and experiences of the landscape has always been an important part of my work as well, so it’s interesting when this aspect has become even more prominent in my work practice. For my upcoming solo exhibition at Boom booked for late 2020 (but likely pushed to early 2021), I feel my drawings are really consolidating themselves in preparation for my painting process. I like pushing boundaries that I haven’t explored previously, such as playing around with line, shape and how particularly I blend my paint colours together. I’m really looking forward to school going back so I can go lose myself in the creative process. Has anything inspired or influenced your art practice lately? I always feel inspired seeing other artists at work for sure. I love working really hard at what I do and love painting till I can hardly see properly or when my feet don’t quite work anymore. I’m sure this is a common feeling amongst other artists. But lately, I think the biggest influence over my work is that I feel I’ve almost been forced to slow down and take it in my stride to continue my work and breathe through it. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but basically the current situation around me, especially of being housebound with my beautiful family has allowed me to see things in a different light. This is changing the way I work, or perhaps the processes I go through in order to complete my work. I have a more solid stride. A slower one, but definitely more grounding. Favourite things at the moment? Read- I’m lovin ‘A painted landscape’ by Amber Creswell Bell at the moment. I’ve never really had the time to go through this book thoroughly, but now I do! It’s so beautiful and inspirational!! Listen- Something has come over me, but I can’t get enough of Paul Kelly at the moment. I even play his music at bed time to help me fall asleep. Watch- I just finished Homeland and Stateless and now looking for another good series… any ideas? We are really looking forward to Beth’s upcoming solo show to be held at Big Boom. In the meantime Beth has just dropped off 4 new cracking paintings.. see below. To see Beth’s Artist listing click here.
