In 2018, I started training to teach the Alexander technique, and began a series of portraits of fellow trainees and teachers.
I see the Alexander technique as a way to study the creative process in the absence of an artform. This absence allows you to experience the process at source, within your body, and by doing this, changes your relationship with it. This changes your relationship with everything.
I wanted to create big and complex work at Chelsea College of Art & Design, but couldn’t afford materials or transportation costs for canvasses.
Because painting felt vulnerable and dangerous like giving birth, it was necessary to leave the communal studio to work at home. After many false starts, I began this series of self-portraits.
I discovered painting in 1987, when I was 16. It seemed like magic, a way to make things happen.
I got a place on a Foundation Course at 18, but left after a day. Socially isolated, I got shingles, had therapy, got a job, passed my driving test, wrote extensively and joined another Foundation Course when I was 21, by which time I felt aged, but ready to go.