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Home Movies is a series of animations and creative video narratives about the experiences of everyday life in my home, garden and the street where I live.  They experiment with different moving images approaches:

Love, Life and Death in the Kitchen is a series of stop motion animations of kitchen and household items, sometimes humorous but also depicting violence and feelings of frustration at the powerlessness of much of everyday life.

Quick-time Tales experiment with rotoscope animation and video of different animals in my garden. Creation Art and Video Effects templates for After effects mimic comic animation and family videos, but also convey different moods from nostalgia for squirrels that may have died to comic tales of cartoon cats.

Walking in Fragments explores different fragmentary experiences of walking down my 'Anywhere Street' based on hyperlapse and SloMo iPhone footage and photographs at different times of the year.

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Experimental Moving Image work in creative video and atop motion animation around real and imagined events in my everyday life. These still need a lot of work and further development. But this was interrupted by issues with RSI.

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Rampant tendrils grasping,
The vine was all but smothering a young
Fruit tree.
Unseasonable heat.
Lemon yellow vine leaves,
Fluttering like tethered birds.
And underneath,
Strands of greying spider threads
Glinted silver in shadows
Of the glaring sun.
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I froze it all with one click.
Time fragment captured.
Then another.
Then another.
Frenzy of nowness.
Afraid to forget.
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It was only later I saw them.
Pinhole-processed in blue.
Microscopic silhouettes
Emerging from the noise -
A tiny woman fishing.
A man standing.
Two children sitting,
Legs swinging,
Watching
the gathering
Storm.

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Old pond,
Fallen Leaf.
Sound of no frog,
Choking.

(In Memory of Matsuo Basho 1686)

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My question: If Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty

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My question: If Beauty is Truth and Truth is Beauty

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If beauty is truth,
And truth beauty,
Then beauty is blue,
And blue is light,
But truth gets lost,

What light do we choose to follow?

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Tales of Gremlin are based on sketchbook diaries and exercises 2020-2022. These are part of ongoing work towards a publication of graphic flash and short fiction tales exploring  subjective experiences and imaginings  in the context of 'real' events in my everyday life and global news disruptions of climate change, conflict and general political uncertainties and misinformation.

Drawings, collage, solarplate and drypoint images have been enhanced to support subconscious surreal narratives through different scanning techniques and/or processing in photo-editing software DxO Silver FX and/or Topaz Studio.

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Gremlin Tales are based on sketchbook diaries and exercises 2020-2022. These are part of ongoing work towards a publication of graphic flash and short fiction tales exploring subjective experiences and imaginings in the context of 'real' events in my everyday life and global news disruptions of climate change, conflict and general political uncertainties and misinformation.

Drawings, collage, solarplate and drypoint images have been enhanced to support subconscious surreal narratives through different scanning techniques and/or processing in DxO Silver FX and/or Topaz Studio.

Life of Gremlin is based on impasto sketches with gesso, modelling paste and masking tape coloured by ink washes. These were then photographed and enhanced using Topaz Studio.

Garden of Paradise uses dampened and torn magazine paper collage pages in my sketchbook, photographed and enhanced blending Topaz Studio oil painting and charcoal sketch filters. A poem suggested by these images will be used as the basis for development of further imagery.

Rat Tales 1 and 2 are based on pages in my sketchbook diary and a creative cut folded zine about invasions of rats in my garden during Lockdown.

Landscape in Red is a creative cut folded zine that suggested a dystopian landscape produced by flooding and global warming - produced before the dramatic real flooding and warming events on our TV screens in summer of 2022.

The Cat Next Door is an experimental portfolio based sketches, video and a short story about the arrival of our neighbour's new cat during the fledging season in the spring of 2022. Photos of these were used as the basis for dry point and solar plate prints, some of which were then further photographed and developed in Topaz Studio. These experiments suggest a range of image-making approaches that will be further developed as new sequential illustrations for the final text.

The Plastic Hedgehog: Illustrations for a short story about disappearing hedgehogs in my garden. Line drawings and photographs with Topaz art filters.

Everyday is a Life Experiment: Collage and mixed media images from my Sketchbook Diary 2021-2022 charting my everyday thoughts in response to everyday events and the TV news. In some cases these respond to prompts from a random selection of photographs by Elliott Erwitt that are found on many of the pages in this particular diary.

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Drawings, collage, solarplate and drypoint images from my sketchbook diary 2021-2022. These explore my subjective experiences and imaginings prompted by events in my everyday life and disruptions by global news about external realities of environmental change and insecurity in the face of political uncertainties and misinformation.

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Quick Time Tales are a body of experimental moving image-based narratives exploring the ‘mindfulness’ of wildlife in my garden – constantly looking around to make sure they are safe and the sudden switches between slow movements and then very rapid communications or flight.

I experiment with different narrative structures linked to a parallel creative writing process. I explore different narrative interpretations of iPhone video footage in Adobe Premiere as video and/or rotoscoped animation and/or After Effects art styles. I also extract action still shots for illustrated graphic tales, sketching and printmaking.

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Quick Time Tales are a body of experimental Moving Image-based narratives exploring the 'mindfulness' of wildlife in my garden - constantly looking around to make sure they are safe and the sudden switches between slow movements and then very rapid communications or flight. From a now large archive of iPhone videos of different animals and dramas in my garden, I have so far started to work on:

- The Adventures of Teto: the Cat Next Door linked to the graphic fiction

- Squirrel Tales about the expanding family of squirrels that has taken up residence in our willow and pine trees.

I experiment with different narrative structures linked to creative writing development as a parallel creative process. I explore different narrative interpretations of iPhone video footage in Adobe Premiere as video and/or rotoscoped animation and/or After Effects art styles. I also extract action still shots for illustrated graphic tales, sketching and printmaking.

Creation Experiments continues my interest in use of digital software to communicate different narratives. And linkages between digital and analogue styles. The application of Creation Effects templates by Noel Powell use After Effects layers, effects and expressions that balance random effects of analogue processes with digital control to produce a range of complex styles and narrative communication depending on the ways in which the footage was originally processed.

NOTE: 'Creation Effects' are a series of After Effects templates including Art Styles, VHS video simulation, Film Styles, glitches and titles developed since 2012 by Noel Powell, a graphic artists based in Indiana. For more details and downloads see: CreationEffects.com

The videos are then used as the basis for still image illustrations, printmaking and sketches for graphic fiction print narratives.

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Quick Time Tales are a body of experimental Moving Image-based narratives exploring the 'mindfulness' of wildlife in my garden - constantly looking around to make sure they are safe and the sudden switches between slow movements and then very rapid communications or flight.

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Creative photography experimenting with different Topaz Studio art styles to suggest imagined environmental, social and political narratives based on photographs in my English wildlife garden.

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Creative photography experimenting with different Topaz Studio art styles to suggest imagined environmental, social and political narratives based on photographs in my English wildlife garden. These are being further developed over time in parallel to short story creative writing for eventual publication as graphic fiction narratives.

Suet Wars: Imagined tale about war and conflict suggested by photographs of hazel nut shells in a bird feeder for suet cakes after they have been nibbled by squirrels. Uses Topaz Studio oil painting filter.

Bone Fairies: Images of old chicken bones dug up by squirrels, cats and birds from home compost in my garden. These 'meat eating remnants' are not only exposed in scatterings of leaves. But also carried by squirrels onto old logs and other surfaces to sharpen their teeth on. Processed in a range of Topaz Studio basic adjustment and drawing filters to produce different illustration styles.

Summer Paintings: Summer photographs of my garden using different art painting styles in Topaz Studio to create different moods from the stillness of dawn and water to the turbulence of wind and searing heat.

Fishing Reflections: Uses a range of Topaz Studio art and AI filters to create different interpretations of found reflections of wire and bell cloches in a plastic bird bath.

Still Life: Painting styles from photographs of objects in my garden using Topaz Sharpening and art painting and drawing filters.

The Bell Jar: Dystopian science fiction images suggested by Topaz Studio AI filters of light and distortions through the plastic bell jars used to protect plants in my garden.

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Creative photography experimenting with different Topaz Studio art styles to suggest imagined environmental, social and political narratives based on photographs in my English wildlife garden.

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Creative cyanotype photography and poetry about mindfulness, reality and truth   and their disruptions by external realities of environmental insecurity and political uncertainties and misinformation.

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Creative cyanotype photography and poetry of personal reflections and imaginings in my English wildlife garden. As attempts at ‘mindfulness’ are inevitably disrupted by external realities of environmental change and sense of insecurity in the face of political uncertainties and misinformation.

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Garden of Mindfulness: SMUGMUG Portfolio

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Garden of Mindfulness: SMUGMUG Portfolio

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'Garden of Mindfulness' is the start of a very personal ongoing body of work exploring the process of 'conscious creativity' as a means of slowing my life down in a safe reflective space. Experimental sketches, printmaking and moving image work juxtapose my attempts at mindfulness with dilemmas of managing our often cruel wildlife garden.

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'Garden of Mindfulness' is the start of a very personal ongoing body of work exploring the process of 'conscious creativity' as a means of slowing my life down in a safe reflective space. Experimental sketches, printmaking and moving image work juxtapose my attempts at mindfulness with dilemmas of managing our often cruel wildlife garden.

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Experimental sketchbook work in my Garden