body time

My hand in the studio

I’m reading Caroline Lucas’s Another England. She writes about the complexities and confusions of being English, especially if you are progressive.

One thing I find difficult about Englishness is our time-keeping. Sure, we were part of the Western rationalism which led to the Enlightenment and the clarities of science. But, I also think of the logics of colonialism - the synchronising of watches, the Edwardian moustaches, the ledgers of goods and accounts crisscrossing the seas.

‘peace’ | 2025 | 120 × 120 × 4cm | acrylic, sand and household paint on cotton canvas

I think of train timetables, engineering the working week. Hours measured.

In the studio, I’m practising “body time”, an antidote to the clock-stop-watching minutes we often live in.

Jeanette Winterson discusses something like this in her memoir, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Her life story inspires me. She made her own kind of time, “real time, which is not subject to the clock or the calendar, and is where the soul used to live.” Where the soul does live.

body time, forms and colour in my garden

And the more your soul is untrammelled, the healthier you are. I hope my work offers you a way into body time too.

graffiti in my city