The Green Room

About 5/6 year ago, I sat in a room full of people I had never met before and with our eyes closed we were told to imagine a bright and vibrant colour. The feeling was overwhelming as I urged towards the colour green. After a few minutes the countdown began, on the count of three we were asked to open our eyes again and imagine the room absorbed in the colour we had chosen. When my eyelids fluttered open the floor and the walls flickered with green. The furniture lit up as the candle lit room painted itself, like a black and white movie merging into colour. The sparkles of light from my tingly, tired eyes danced around the room like butterflies. As the green dissipated, a few blinks later I reclaimed my view of the dark room. I felt relaxed and at peace. The session ended and I drove home with a solid green image in my mind. From the car I ran into my house, grabbed my sketch book and began to scribble down the dancing room of green.

I've always used self portraiture as support and an outlet for my mental health. My art has played a huge part in healing trauma and a great form of distraction over the years. To either make sense of my thoughts or to escape to another world for a while. Over the past 6 months I've been dealing with a lot of doubts about myself, my body, my abilities, my art work and my worth. I found that self portraiture, once a place of pure escapism, made me feel extremely vulnerable and I became scared to open up and self doubt started to creep in. I decided to work through it away from art and build from the bottom up, slowly ushering to trust myself again.

The studio make over was a huge distraction for me, it was a tangible and satisfying to see come together from all the work we put in. I was so worried that I wouldn’t be able to make art again but since finishing the studio and having a new place to create in I found myself coming back to ‘The Green Room' idea. The scribbles in my book from all those years ago reminded me of a moment I felt peace, vulnerability and creativity collide.

I felt an immense pull back to this idea and knowing I wanted to get back to a place where I felt comfortable with my artistic voice again, I decided to make this my first project in The Wonky Studio. I pushed through all the negative thoughts and spent the past two months building this set, going through the emotions, carefully piecing it all together and fully adoring the process. Constructing and reworking every part of it. From the moment I started painting the props, to cutting out the butterflies, to assembling it all together in front of the backdrop, to seeing it light up in front of me whilst shooting, it has felt like an artistic resurgence. It's been quite a different journey to how I have worked in the past, but this process has been cathartic and I know now that my creative voice has survived once again. I've never felt more fulfilled and I can’t wait to continue to thrive in here!!

I want this image to be a sign that no matter how hard the moments of confusion may be, there will always be more colour on it's way, and when it comes, embrace it hard 💚