I found myself more absorbed than ever with what lives inside me this inktober.

Inktober is a yearly 31 day drawing challenge Over the 31 days of October set up originally by Jake Parker and has mercifully few rules.

1) is that you must make works in ink based on a one word prompt each day.

2) that you must do it on that day and share it on social media with the inktober hashtag

This gives both a boundary in terms of media and one in terms of time which seem to help me tap into ideas in a way that doesn’t always happen with my more considered work. There is a list of single word prompts, some nouns, some verbs. I do not think about the days word until that morning. So I have only a few hours to roll it around and find out what it means to me. This is a good (though sometimes frustrating) thing. I don’t punish myself if I get nothing. I have skipped a word before now, it’s ok, this exercise is for me and it’s my choice not to do it too.

My relationship with the language of images, with ink and with how you can start from a single word and find yourself diving into places you had never anticipated so suddenly, seems to have moved to another level this year somehow. I think my ability to access my inner stories and some of the darker and more difficult emotions that live in me has become more focused somehow.

This strange year has made so many of us reflect on our feelings and our sense of our place in the world and wonder sometimes what we are for.

I think I am for making things appear from paper. Things that say something about me but also about the state of being a human more generally. Things that won’t exist until I make them but will hopefully have an existence beyond me and help others access some of their stories too. Because although we are all unique, our stories are entwined and travel together, wherever we are.

I managed 28 out of the 31 this year, here are my favourites

Some of these are available to buy, please contact me if interested. And wax and bleach? Well I stretched the media rules a little….