brigid collins art
Materiality is central to my practice, which has evolved into a deep
investigation into the spatial and tactile qualities of poetry. Considering
words themselves as a material, I explore the textural layers that I encounter
within poems by translating these into drawings, paintings, collages and mixed
media sculptural forms, ranging from books and ladders, to unique forms that I
have developed and call ‘Poem-Houses’. These ‘Poem-Houses’ have evolved as a
result of my experience of poems, as ‘things’ which feel very much like ‘rooms’
and in which I am able to spend time exploring the possibilities of mood and
meaning that are part of the atmosphere there and around whose delicate edges,
insights and alternative or new meanings begin to suggest themselves. My work
becomes a visual refrain – an echo, of sorts – responding to what I have found
in such places by means of a process that feels to be almost archaeological and
to apparently be reconnecting with how it all began for me. As my process
continues, the raw material that I have discovered inside a poem transmutes into
and gradually becomes a delicate interweaving of words, natural forms, tissue,
wire, thread, wax, with found and other materials, as if by some kind of
alchemy, so eluding definition and transcending boundaries of categorisation.
Such an unfettering of my “attitude of mind” (see Kathleen Jamie’s poem) has
encouraged me to cross boundaries that are perceived between disciplines,
‘allowing’ me to work with media such as video and porcelain clay to create
short video and ceramic pieces, through which I experience a liberating feeling
of ‘flow’, my natural curiosity piqued by all that I do not know
