Meal-times called for passionate discussions with fellow residents on topics like culture, language, art, progress on and plans for current project   

Working in the meadow

I also developed a deep friendship with Spanish artist Mar Serinya. We found such instant connection within our ideas and practices that it automatically led us to work on a collaborative project.

Mar Serinya with her boyfriend Sergei 

Working in the forest

Indoor working area -I  was working with dead plants and seeds for my installation 

For works created during this residency , click below

​Fragility
The Unborn
Together Forever

​Halway through my collaboration with Denise Schellmann  and we are having a blast! Denise is an artist from Vienna who is doing her artist residency with Instinc in Singapore. It was just wonderful to find ourselves so much in sync regarding our attitude towards art making and the role art plays in our lives.
Since Denise's is a drawing based practice I seized the chance to develop my own drawing working with her. We were both attracted to tracing paper as a drawing medium and so we bought rolls and pads of it and set to work.

In the first week or so we explored each other's ways of working. For example Denise started with working on 3D drawing and I started with markmaking on paper. But soon I couldn't help but crumple the paper in search of texture in the material of the paper itself. The texture experiments continued for a while – I added wax (and some other materials as well) and experimented with different weights of tracing paper (example image on the  right). 
But then i needed to mould the paper some more and see how much I could do with it. A variety of scupltures in several sizes and shapes and that's how these forms were born.

​While I was texturing and sculpting with tracing paper, Denise moved back to drawing on flat paper but  her use of colour and mark-making expanded and she also started drawing on a much larger scale. 
​A month into the collaboration we had both developed a solid body of studies (and Denise even had some finished works) that we felt we could take forward. However we felt that there was a lot to be gained from embracing the challenge of merging what we had developed into the same work. This was not easy. Every artist has her unique style, like a handwriting and trying to merge 2 different styles into the same work was initially challenging. I had to modify my textures considerably and she had to make her marks a lot bolder. But we are now at the stage where we are quite thrilled with what we are developing. The final work will take the form of an installation where we are literally "drawing into space". Many thanks to Alexis Butt at the Affordable Art Fair who has been very supportive of our endeavour in allowing us a prominent space to exhibit our installation at AAF this November.  This will be followed by a  two-person show at Instinc. (More details in subsequent blogs)

I had the opportunity to exhibit some paintings at the beautiful National Library Building, (Central Library Singapore). One of the intentions of this exhibition was to further an appreciation of visual art amongst the community. It was enriching to share my practice and love of art with so many via artist talks. 

The work for the exhibition was derived from another work I had done last year in a residency context at BigCi (photograph on the right). Adapting a site specific work to a gallery context was an interesting challenge. 

In a previous blog post I mentioned my walks in the forests at the edge of the Wollemi National Park during a 2014 artist residency at BigCI. It was not all walking though. There was a lot of clambering up and down the rocks and making my way through the thick undergrowth. Often I sat on the rocks for hours; contemplating, meditating till the insects and birds drew nearer thinking I was part of the natural flora and fauna. And of course I filled pages and pages of sketchbooks with drawing and scribbling.

Over time one subject that kept showing up in my sketchbook was the fascinating plant life. I loved some of my drawings but others did not have that “feeling” that had inspired me to draw them in the first place. I had to ask myself what was this essence that I was trying to capture on my sketchbook page. And then it came to me. These plants, wild and chaotic as they were, seemed to grow in accordance with an internal order, a grace that is so obvious to see yet hard to put into words.

This astounding array of plantlife is the outcome of centuries of adapting to the environmental conditions in the region, every mutation leading to another new variety. (In my last blog post I mention that this part of the world has the largest variety of flora in the world after the Amazon Basin) Even as I walked around I saw evidence of adaptation and resilience everywhere. In many places one can still see the ground charred black by recent bush fires but a green forest had sprung up over it. I saw tall trees growing leafy and abundant at the top but with their entire trunk hollowed out by fire. I saw some trees growing on other trees that were rooted in the rock-no deep roots to sustain the enormous structures.

Resilience perhaps is the source of their wild beauty? In every moment their growth patterns are dictated by the environmental conditions that they sustain and overcome. Flexibility in adapting to their surroundings manifests itself in a grace that is visually perceptible.

Something else about these plants also left a lasting impression. As I walked around I saw how plants in the wilderness blossom and flourish in their fullest splendor. But when I walked by the same spot on the next day I would be shocked to find that what had caught my attention yesterday was often lost forever or completely changed by the forces of nature. The abundance flourishing in the face of inevitable transience gave me pause for thought.

Some of the walls of the Art Shed at BigCI are made of whiteboards –the same whiteboard that we use in our offices and schools to present our thinking to an audience. Whiteboard and whiteboard markers are a hard, cold, industrial material so different from the organic materials I gravitate towards in my work. Yet the fact that something drawn on a whiteboard is erased in seconds made this material appropriate for what I had to express about these experiences. I painstakingly recreated my sketches on the huge whiteboard wall. Seeking to recreate the intangible rhythm of the forest with whiteboard markers was a challenging experience. The process was a personal journey of attempting to reconcile my urban existence with the lessons I learnt from nature. As I gave my self over to the process, the experience changed me forever.