These elements have emerged after numerous visits to the beaches of Donegal on the West Coast of Ireland, and they have become some of the materials I have chosen for this collaboration. We're working on a book, which shall indeed contain pen and ink sketches, but this new work will be sculptural in form and a new direction for me. I will be using a selection of natural materials that have been chosen for their ecologically sustainable qualities as well as wool and fabric, and the work shall be created in my studio as well as on the beaches themselves. A film and photographic record shall be created and some of the photographs will become part of the book.

Instead of producing lines on paper, I hope to use these physical elements in the same way I have used a pen and pencil. The idea is to create three dimensional “paintings” in the sand, surrounding landscape and in the studio. It is again looking at the nature of creating order out of chaos. At times, depressive illness can very quickly transform the beautiful natural world into a dark and nightmarish experience and I find collecting materials found in nature to be in itself a way to connect with it.

The question of colour enters the equation once again but I find working in nature using natural materials is another opportunity to release myself from the anxiety and to place these objects in the canvas of the landscape with abandon. The teachings of the Buddha have brought great comfort to me in my life and I have tried to embrace the quality of impermanence in my life and my work. The Humandala performance in 2001 was a 30 metre diameter chalk mandala that took a day to create was then danced into colourful, dusty oblivion by their creators. These new constructions shall also Arise, Exist and Pass away as time, nature and the elements of climate shall eventually obliterate any sense of permanence they might once have had. Art is experiential, not sacred.

Art is experiential, not sacred