Living with M.E. I alternate between worlds. One busy with everyone in it, and the other living in a pause, shut inside for months at a time, physically unable to get about. A world where I can see what is going on outside, but I can’t access it. Shut in but also shut out.

I come from a very traditional art education, which came with a way of ‘seeing’ the world. I felt that there was a definite ‘right’ way to make art, which ultimately inhibited me from following my own curiosity. The restriction of M.E. has slowly unclenched my ideas and assumptions around both what life and art is, and I am beginning to realise how much I have gained from this.

By using materials that have no weight of expectation associated with them, I have freedom to explore ideas with less judgement around both the process and the outcome. Moving away from my expectations around painting, my ideas take me to unexpected places without having to know immediately why. My recent work has emerged as a powerful response to my experience of living with M.E. which surprised me. It gave me far greater insight into some of the feelings I have about living with this condition. I hadn’t realised how much I tried to work around it, ignore it, and hide the humiliation of not being able.

Managing repeated flare ups of M.E. has led me to question, can I say more doing less? At times I have no energy to physically create. Yet I am constantly thinking. It is these times of retreat that seem to nurture ideas from a deeper level of stillness

I am starting to develop a way that embraces my reality and has an honesty about how I am. A limitation that forces clarity and simplicity. I am looking at different ways for my ideas to be made, by collaborations which detach me from some of the process of making.