My art practice came into being in what I describe as my ‘Middle Ages’. Undertaking an art degree as a mature student, I entered a visually creative world with the breath of young dynamic colleagues. My previous career in social care also informs my approach as I look for what is going on underneath as well as what is visible. I am particularly interested in the process of becoming visible, exploring internal worlds from the surface. Recent works in print, working with differing processes, increase the possibilities of representation. Sketching a group of folks clearing a riverbed inspired numerous impressions of moving and active figures. 

Marks on paper are of the utmost importance here; I see lines, shapes and colours making representations of inner and outer worlds. Sometimes I move from evocative impressions to figurative image and vice versa. My recent prints of birds in flight fit in here

Ghost Intaglio etching 2019

 

Chicken – acrylic, pastel, ink on board 2019

Then again, I might work with searing colour, humour and irony, sometimes just working with what comes from an uneven surface. The surface evokes what lies beneath.

In my experience the disrupted image can express both imperfection and the creative potential of mistakes. My chicken came out of experimentation with the surface using a mix of marble dust and acrylic and the lines that emerged with spilled ink. Memories of the Baba Yaga story led to a chicken on stilts…

My work is informed by a female perspective, and my interests include other ways artists incorporate their experience invoking political and social outcomes.

The blog on my website vivlm.com records my art journey and is an artwork in itself.

.The theoretical consideration of others is important to me for instance. In the work of Olivia Laing, and her theory around the potential of change, Mira Schor, artist, American art historian and commentator.