There’s something quietly radical in inviting fire into your creative work. When I first brought it into my practice during my PhD, it was about elimination. I wanted to burn things away, to leave nothing behind. But the materials resisted. Metal threads clung to their shape; fragments endured. Looking back, their resilience and defiance was significant, particularly in relation to my ageing, creative self.
Now, fire plays a different role in my process. It isn’t destruction anymore—it’s transformation. Silk and metal fuse themselves together and re-form into something which feels almost primal. Yet what results is never completely mine. I can meticulously prepare the materials through a fine-tuned process, but once fire arrives, I’m compelled to relinquish control. This feels very significant and maybe, that’s the point.
‘Standing at the back door, match in hand… that felt powerful. As if I’d just been working to reach this point of no return. As the flame ate through my carefully wrought fabric, I let go of control and watched in fascination’. (Sketchbook entry, Oct 2020)
As I grow older, this act of letting go has become both more difficult and more necessary. The body weakens, energy wanes, the world around me feels less certain. Yet in the studio, I’m reminded that unpredictability can be sustaining. Using fire as an integral part of my process, offers the unexpected where normally, daily life constrains. Fire carries danger, yes, but also much welcomed vitality.
There’s something almost incongruous in the fragility of the burnt form; dark, disfigured, yet oddly resilient, that mirrors my own sense of ageing. I am not what I was. Layers char and fall away. But beneath the surface, there’s complexity and a strange kind of beauty and strength. I find this very reassuring.
Fire gives me permission to inhabit this stage of life differently—not as decline, but as a space of risk, curiosity, and transformation. It doesn’t resolve anything. It doesn’t give me answers. What it offers is the chance to keep going, to stay open, to be optimistic about what might yet emerge.
‘I don’t foresee an ending to any of this journey. Rather, it’s a quest to find the resilience to keep going, regardless’. (Sketchbook entry, Nov 2022)