Pam French

Exhibition Title: upon a fallen leaf

This series of work is an exploration of what it means to surrender, of forfeiting control and expectations and moving into intuition. The title ‘Upon a fallen leaf’ encapsulates this for me and is a line from the poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen symbolises a deep letting go.

For many years I have kept visual records and mind maps of my observations in the form of visual diaries, on index cards, or even as tiny sculptures. It is one of the ways I process the world, of being present in an indirect way.

I am particularly interested in what happens during the process of instinctive drawing, in spiral thinking and in recording a stream of consciousness. My observations are intuitive, I’m often in conversation or the company of others. I regularly insert an element of chance by randomly pre-cutting pages in a variety of different configurations, or by choosing materials and colours at random to create unexpected compositions or relationships.

For this body of work, I have pushed further by integrating this approach more fully into my painting practice. Using the bold drawings in my visual diaries as a starting point the paintings morphed and changed as they became their own entity, sometimes with more description, others moved into abstraction.

They are stories upon stories within the works. Just as I let chance and intuition form the drawings, while painting I let my thoughts wander to people, gatherings, empty places, memories within memories. It was a constant practice of letting go, keeping the same level of intuition alive that existed in the original note taking and stream of consciousness. Interiors fold into nature, nature inserts itself into space. The two nurture each other, just as we need life deep within us, we need it in our interiors and with each other.