Retirement is My Work of Art

Are you only considered an artist when you have produced an object or performance piece? Can you not be an artist of the mind?

The sources and inspiration for my work arise from my need to respond fully to the psychology of retirement.

My work is the result of the mental space freed up by the great gifts of this specific life transition: time, opportunity and freedom. These are the source of the agency that enables me to explore my personal geology alongside the lives of others.

A text, image or location activates my imagination and I utilise the power and eloquence of these artefacts as the springboard for historical, cultural and non-linear investigations. I seek to construct my own new thoughts, to remix and mediate the experience, and illuminate through documents, archives and diaries. The projects often share common themes where ordinary people find themselves in extraordinary situations.  I use my preoccupations  as a way of exploring, understanding and deepening my own life experiences. My retirement practice allows me to examine these experiences in a more personalised, less pressured, more creative way. By necessity this can result in unfinished and unresolved inventories of fragments: thoughts, photos and ephemera!

I research to explore and find out what I feel about something not to display what I know.

You can walk further with me on this journey by visiting my other site: https://historyinthemaking.eu/