Comets keep making an appearance in my work. I thought it would be fun to see how my treatment of them has changed over the years.

I began making work featuring comets in 1997-8, when I made a piece titled “Prayerbook for a Comet”. The work was purchased by a private collector in 1998. Unfortunately my hard-drive failed at the time, and no photos from that time survived, so I have no records of it. However, I remember it well; consisting of around 12 A5-sized monotypes arranged on a board to look like book pages, it was presented behind glass in a large frame. I had depicted every day objects such as crockery, plants and utensils interspersed with quotes taken from the writings of Marcus Aurelius (Roman Emperor, 08.04.161 - 17.04.180). The objects represented offerings from Earth to a comet which threatened destruction of life as we know it, and a reminder of how mundane things become suddenly precious when teetering on the brink of extinction.

It's a pity I don't have any records of this early work, as it would have been so interesting to compare work from 20 years ago to today's. The collage above shows details of comets as they have appeared in my work since 2008, arranged in chronological order:
2008   2008   2012   2013
2013   2013    2015   2015
2015   2015     2015    2016
2016   2019    2019    2019

On a related note, I will be glad when Mercury comes out of retrograde next week. I usually view superstitions surrounding astrological events with interest purely from a cultural and folk-lore point of view, not really believing they could have much physical effect on life on Earth. However, since Mercury went into retrograde on July 8 I have experienced so many technological failures and hiccups. My iPad charger cable broke, my vape broke, Airdrop works one minute and the next refuses to see my devices, my phone suddenly drained itself of charge whilst being charged, I can't type the simplest of words without typos, the oven broke - the list goes on. I will leave it up to you to decide: Is it me, or is it Mercury?

Thanks for visiting, see you on the other side of retrograde next week!

These drawing are not by me, they are by Bernard, my partner, who is a painter and has kept notebooks for many years.
​
These pages are from my favourite notebook of his. They fascinate me because of his writing and symbols mixed with images on each page. I have been looking at them again this week in connection to my own work; his texts, diagrams, sketches, found objects and images combine on each page to make something as mysterious to me as the Voynich manuscript. I would like the same intrigue in my own work, using my unreadable writing and mixing it up a bit.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Images by kind permission of Bernard M Griffiths

The February sun has started swinging around into the house, triggering my early spring habit of going around observing shadows cast through glass. I find the light beautiful and so evocative I go around the place performing strange yoga poses in my efforts to capture them without getting the shadow of my camera in the way. This is a shadow of my favourite drinking glass I use for apple cider vinegar drinks (yum on ice!)
This whole week, however, was spent on beginning to set up a Redbubble shop with my Binky McKee Instagram illustrations. I have been asked several times recently if there is somewhere people could buy prints or cards or just anything with my work on it that I thought it was about time. I settled on Redbubble after about 10 days of researching licensing my work, other print on demand services, rates of exchange, currency, etc. I love Redbubble’s vibe and products, and they have a UK print shop which means dimensions and colour conversions should be less of a headache.
I am very excited about the venture, and the entire week has been spent cleaning up artworks, resizing and redesigning to suit the different products. I love the work, it completely satisfies the graphic designer in me, and it feels very positive.
I have quite a way to go until I can officially announce the ‘grand opening’ - I reckon it will take about a month until I have my ‘best nine’ and personal favourites completed to suit all products. Once I have done that, I am considering doing the same for my more zentangly drawings.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Once again I have ink-stained fingers from cleaning my Rotring technical pens, trying to persuade them to work after a long hiatus while we moved house last year. It took two hours of Saturday plus Sunday morning to restore them because they had been left unused lying on their sides for so long. There was ink everywhere, but the joy when they finally started running again made it all worthwhile! It was like being reunited with very old friends I hadn’t seen for quite some time. I find the quality of the line absolutely gut-deep inspirational and it makes me want to get going on new work.

The drawings pictured above are works I made in 2014. I was intrigued to find out just how far you could obliterate a word before it completely lost its meaning. I started working over my own handwriting as well as printed text (just like at school, when everyone fills in all the closed shapes in the letters in their jotters). I was intrigued to discover I could take it to a point where the text was no longer legible, but still retained a sensation of being text; something in the rhythm of the strokes and length of the shapes which were once words and sentences still indicated a system of language in spite of its heavy disguise. It was like looking at a foreign or ancient text, mysterious, obfuscated, yet knowing it had a meaning. I worked as a graphic designer and calligrapher during the 1990s, obsessed with the beauty and history of fonts, so it came as no surprise to me that I enjoyed exploring different ways to alter text. Besides which, I discovered some wonderful new forms! I also found out that illegible text is actually a thing, and has been named Asemic Writing (link to Wikipedia page)

Since 2014, this work has continued quietly in the background while I completed the body of work which became my Brave Oleander show with the Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh, in 2018. That exhibition was immediately followed by the house move and working on book illustrations as Binky McKee (still in progress), but I finally have achieved space in my work room and a timetable which allows both Heather Eliza and Binky works to run side by side. This is truly living the dream, I feel so lucky and privileged to be able to work this way. I have already started to incorporate asemic writing into my Heather Eliza work and it is very exciting!

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

I took an almost total break from unpacking boxes from the house move this week and immersed myself in creating nocturnal gardens; more Binky McKee work (I really must get around to updating Binky's website!) The bottom two images read like a cartoon: (1) Trees disturbed by noisy jiggling stars, and (2) Trees organising the stars. The Binky McKee website may not be up to date but I am posting images on Instagram, link here.

​Thanks for visiting! See you next week.

An uneventful yet busy week, and just like everyone else in the UK I am posting snow photos. The snow continued, and continued to fall until we were snowed in and immobilised. It was time to help out neighbours and pull together as a community. I made lots of soups and broths. It is amazing how much time was spent shovelling snow every day. Pavements and paths were impassible. Even the dog got housebound for a few hours when an avalanche fell from the roof, depositing nearly four feet of snow in front of the back door.

- Digging a path outside our house, where the snow wasn't so deep, to get the dog into the garden the long way
- The thaw began slowly in a drip-freeze pattern
- Daggers!
- Buried things began to emerge
- Avalanche from the roof
- Bubble bath
- Frog
- Owl
- My small drawings looking really smart in their mounts

Finally, I spent three days mounting my drawings to go for framing for my show in April. Deliveries of materials and food were delayed due to severe weather conditions. There were rows of empty shelves in the supermarkets. My work resumed at last towards the end of the week, and I finished the mounts yesterday afternoon.

Thanks for visiting, see you next week!

Sheets of Kozu Shi Japanese tissue drying on the line after staining with coffee
Kozu Shi is the paper I use for all my larger drawings, plus quite a number of smaller works. It behaves more like a fabric than paper, lending itself to a variety of materials and techniques such as staining, washing and stitching. In spite of its low weight (I think about 90gsm) it is a very strong paper and can be ironed just like fabric during the work process or on completion.

Working with stains and washes does require a bit of care, however: cool water is better than warm, which I discovered during this process of staining with coffee today - I was too impatient and used quite hot coffee on a couple of these sheets, which literally turned the paper into soft, wet tissue. The wind got up, and the next thing I knew the clothes-pegs were still on the line, but each with only a tiny, individual scrap of damp tissue! The remaining sheets of paper were lying sans corners in the corner of the decking in crumpled heaps.

In this case such an accident didn't matter. The staining worked really well which was the main point; and as for tears, holes, or damaged corners, I usually like to incorporate those into the work as an 'event' which formed part of the work's creation. I stained up a few offcuts of Kozu Shi to match to repair corners where necessary, and got everything back on the clothes-line to dry. 

After bringing the papers in for the night and airing them, my workspace smelled like a wonderful coffee shop (one good reason to choose coffee!) I will often use tea, ink or watercolour for staining, but on this occasion opted for coffee because of its slightly cooler colour, and the fact coffee forms sharper edges to the layers of wash. I collect leftovers from the bottom of my cafetière, plus on this occasion I added a whole fresh pot - hence the hot water. I would have to research the chemistry to understand why, but coffee seems to size the paper in a similar way to rabbit-skin glue, whether I use ground or instant from a jar.

Thank you for reading,
​A big cheery wave and best wishes to you all!
Heather

✍️