My residency at The Muse Gallery

It’s fascinating to explore the tension between two and three dimensions as my paper garments get ever more depth to them…

A few weeks ago I was sitting in my car, waiting, when a man dressed all in black walked past. It was a sunny morning and the effect of his clothes seemed to me, at that moment, to suggest that his body (at least) had been cut out of/removed from the surrounding space. His head appeared to be being carried along on an area of negative space. I’ve heard people say they dress all in black for ease, meaning presumably that they have to think less in the morning when all they can combine are garments in shades of black.

There have indeed been many days in my own life when I‘ve worn all black, especially when I’m feeling less that happy/comfortable in my own skin. I did know, therefore, and have felt, that black as a colour is often used to disguise us, and what we’re feeling. It’s surely believed by (especially) women the world over that black actually visually blurs, or shrinks or disguises the extent of a spreading physical outline. Black can make you appear/feel slimmer; that is, compared to some colours which appear actively expansive.

On the day when I watched that man walk past however I was struck forcibly by the extent to which black can in fact do more than that, it can actually seem to suggest negative space, to almost remove a body from existence. The idea’s nicely summed up by this quote: “Start with black because if you know where all the colour is lost you’ll know where to begin to find it”.

Many people however don’t know how to look for colour, they simply don’t have the confidence. All of this sees me return, as regards my thinking, to the nature of our outer/subtle self, worn as if it were a garment, itself invisible and yet glimpsed, as if by its hem. As if details of/from it were written/projected upon our outer/visible self via our choices, actions, clothes, body postures etc.

Part of the nature of the subtle side of each of us remains detached from the material world; yet the word ‘enclosure’ has become important to me of late. There are so many ways in which we enclose ourselves, often because of sought after protection (in buildings, from the elements etc). The paper garments I’m making seek to reveal as surely as they appear capable of enclosing/protecting a human being’s more ephemeral aspects. They’re personal enclosures and yet present evidence of the mind/thoughts/psyche to the outside world, hung around the body.

Style certainly has an influence, it spreads like an energy, it contains choices made, it includes all attached connections regarding colour.

On one page of the sketchbook I’ve now filled with ideas/designs for particular pieces/garments is a long, all black, jacket covered with black paper butterflies. On it will be written: ‘my mind flutters like a butterfly until the world turns dark’ or perhaps ‘my thoughts swarm like butterflies across the surface of my psyche and turn the world black’. The garment will be constructed from stiff black card so that one’s prompted to imagine the scissors that would have cut out its outline shape from all the surrounding worldly colour.