In 2022, I was in ’In The Weeds’ a play by Joseph Wilde*, directed by Rebecca Atkinson-Lord for Mull Theatre*. It toured the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (and some of England) that Spring and was heading to Edinburgh Festival Fringe for August at the prestigious Summerhall. In the action at the start of the play, my character, a scientist, makes notes of the flora and fauna of the Inner Hebrides, in search of a sea-creature he believes may have killed his family. In actuality, I was making quick sketches of the audience as they were taking their seats and waiting for the play to begin properly. Over the action of the play, the notebook gets snatched out of my hands and thrown into the waters of the 2m x 2m wooden pond that forms the stage of the play. Water-damaged and dried, I collected the 28 notebooks, all marked with my character’s name, ’Kazumi Fujimoto’. 

There was something about the hard-to-distinguish scratchings that I found intriguing. Who were these shadowy figures? What could I make with theses faces and figures that would make sense with what I do? 

I wanted to do something artistic with them, I just didn’t know what. They remained in my studio, a pile of ragged A6 notebooks, ancient and worn.

Discipline of Freedom workshop

In 2024 I had booked to participate in a workshop that I’ve been going to since 2009. The Discipline of Freedom is a workshop facilitated by Paul Oertel and Nancy Spanier, a husband and wife team of creatives who live in France. I was introduced to them by another creative force, Kath Burlinson* after a few years of being part of her founding workshops for The Authentic Artist* workshops. 

The workshops are multi-disciplinary, working with several types of artists – playwrights, dancers, actors, musicians, and visual artists, in the bucolic environment of Nancy and Paul’s workshop. Each artist gets to work with the couple each day over the 5 days. I chose to concentrate on the notebooks while Henry McGrath , Ellis Kerkhoven, Nigel Hollidge and Baker Mukasa worked on more performance aspects of their work.

RAW

Towards the end of 2024 I applied for and was awarded a 2 week residency to work in a space at another Bow Arts site, Royal Albert Wharf (RAW). I had to time it to let myself settle into the performances of My Neighbour Totoro and get some interesting work done. Part of the residency was to conduct a portrait drawing workshops which, I must admit, was slightly daunting. Anything that was public facing about my practise and technique, I find daunting. But who cares? It was

For the RAW residency I took the damaged and dried notebooks and worked on them, experimenting with size and media until I settled on charcoal on paper.

Working from part imagination, part tiny, obliterated source material, and part knowledge of the human face, is exciting to me, remembering how I loved as a kid making faces out of random squiggles and shapes (I eventually learned that this is called pareidolelia) but this time the squiggles and shapes were of my own doing, albeit of an audience I was face to face with 28 times over the Edinburgh Fringe in 2022. It was more a test of commitment to the methodology, trying not to make them too human, while retaining some recognisability of humanness., but being comfortable with the alien quality that was emerging from the sketches. Perhaps it was a step towards the paintings of Susie Hamilton who I met in 2024 via her husband’s play that I was in. Perhaps it is a love for working quickly that I seem to have, but this time in large scale.

These videos and images, I hope, show the scale of the work that I was going for and the joy I had in creating them.