I had asked Hugh Morris to see the original but was unable to organise this. I chose the sketch as my object.

I wanted to find out more about Edward James , to understand what the photo did not tell me. Who was the man in the sketch that had established West Dean as a centre for the Arts.

I read two of three books to include

The Heart and The Word - A Selection of Poems by Edward James, George Weiderfield & Nicholson 1987.

A Surreal Life Edward James 1907-1984, The Royal Pavilion Libraries and Museum, Brighton & Hove, 1998

I wanted to understand his poetry and life story. I did not really warm to his poetry other than the "Last Sonnet" written before his death.

His life was a number of distinct phases and he seemed disillusioned and disappointed with life , people and the use of his wealth, until he got to Mexico where he seemed to find a place to be himself and have genuine relationships.

I was considering a green background, as Edward had referred to the Green Gloom in his Last Sonnet . Gardens seemed important to him. At this stage I was focused on the representing the drawing of Edward James but in a alternative way with words.

I spent quite a while thinking of associated words, when looking at the poetry.

I was focused on Edward.

I wanted to try Egg Tempura and used this media to create a rich green background.

I really liked the Egg Tempura and had planned to use this to transfer the image too.

Tacita Dean

David Shrigley

Fiona Banner

Jenny Holsen

Tracey Emin

Barbera Groger

When I looked at these artists , I liked the idea of less words rather than more and started to look at a series of words that would describe phases of Edward James life.

With only a week to go, I was somewhat concerned. then in a moment I looked at one of my test painting sheets and thought I think I prefer this. It looks like code.

I took some time out soul searching and just emptying my thoughts on to paper. I looked at "Asemic" writing of Henri Michaux as advised by Tabatha. I also tried Automatic writing with the use of channelling.

The experience made me really ask my self what I was responding to. Having now read about Edward James, I don't have much in common with a very wealthy, eccentric white man, who really could do anything he wanted to. I did however have the experience of being silenced and this is how I came up with a different idea.

The message converted to morse code is " women across the world continue to be silenced stop". It took a number of attempts to plan out the size of the image and layout in accordance with morse code, protocols. I used an on line morse code generator, and have saved the audio file too.

The next consideration was the medium I have chosen to paint with egg tempura as I so liked the result on the green background. I did consider whether this should be a black and white image, should the stop be in red.

In the end I decided on colours as a nod to Edwards James colour code writing and also that the topic is not just black and white in relevance.

West Dean itself and the objects in it have laid as silent watchers of the past and present. With any picture there is an interpretation. This was brought home to be especially with the exercise we did with Michelle Ussher in relation to describing the art work, and what the subject, composition and objects in the picture could tell us as the observer