Sally Stenton, 2 – 16 November, 2024

The residency was remarkable in the way it offered a gentle container for a re-discovery of elements of my art practice that had been sidelined overtime. 

I had forgotten the fluid joy of water and colour on a page. Returning to something after many years summons doubt, but I had chosen to work with uncertainty and through that choice different possibilities arise. I watch myself taking many tiny little leaps of faith.

My current practice adds walking and writing to the mix, and via this interplay, I connect painting to the action of water in forming smooth pebbles. Watching how the fluid colour mixes, settles and dries, there is a resonance in the images that transpire, with wet innards and at other times solid stone. I begin to use natural colours (red cabbage, turmeric, beetroot) that can be rinsed by the sea, with kelp as a connector.

In holding a pebble close to my head, I am listening to the deep time stories of seismic movement, intense heat and compression that led to its formation. My collective art practice is expanding through this solo residency: solitary, but not solitary…company and compatriots in other guises – pebbles, paper, sand, water, vegetation, air and gravity. I was not the only human presence, but might have been and I consider how the experience would have changed if my husband had not been able to join me in this remote location.

The time on the residency was loosely framed by a paper I had written entitled “In search of the unpredicted: Walking in spaces of open enquiry”.  This experimental writing served as a vessel for open exploration and in this residency I found many containers useful for holding uncertainty. These included writing and walking, a-n Artists blog platform where I placed notes and images,  bowls, jars, microwave, paint brushes, paper for making and holding colour and of course Brisons Veor which offered just what was needed for this experiment: uncluttered from demands and distractions, porous with a door opening to the sea. Simultaneously holding and enabling.

www.sallystenton.com