I recently encountered the fibreart of British artist Christine Ryan, from whose artist statement I culled these few key sentences and phrases – “I am interested in the effects of weathering, erosion and time, which turn the most robust of natural and manmade features into a fragile state of change, breaking down and building up layer upon layer….” In her statement she refers frequently to the ebb and flow rhythms of events and change in Life and landscapes, a theme that has been in my work for many years as the Ebb&Flow series. She likens these ebbs and flows to our memories which can be fragmentary or fleeting, and, like various marks on a surface, these may give clues to their meaning or their source. Think ancient human markings on cave walls and rock surfaces which mark the start of all human recorded information about group history, lifestyle and memory of important events.

A key concept in my Ebb&Flow series is that nothing stays the same for ever. Throughout our lives, people come and go, by birth, marriage and death; neighbours move in and out; or we ourselves change our geographical location, and our health and financial situation can change, too. Considering Landscape as a metaphor for Life, no matter how stable and unchanging that landscape looks, the action of the elements over time is constantly eroding it somewhere (denudation) and building it up somewhere else (deposition). A beach is the perfect metaphor for a life, as daily visits show very little change as tides come in and receed, but the occasional storm can drastically change the profile of that beach, and so it is with a person’s life.