The work in this post comes from my collaboration with Caroline Black who is studying photography. She is interested in folklore, the boundaries of belief, the mother earth, ancient woodlands. Her work started from exploring the pain of stillbirth.  We have known one another from the OCA Scottish group for a number of years although have never worked together before. Caroline was familiar with my work and I with hers. I think for a shared project, this meant that we could start a few rungs up the ladder with less worry about trying to understand what the other working on and fear of causing upset at the emotional elements of both of our work. I found an immediate sense of contact with Caroline and our ideas seemed to spark off one another. We had some Zoom chats and exchanged emails and setup a shared drive to show off our work. Having listed many poisitive of our collaboration, we faced the same challenges as I did with Deborah in fitting around one another’s work, homelife and study. This just seems to be a fact of life in working with others.

In the works shown below I took Caroline’s photographs and decided on a physical approach. I printed her images rather than working just on the computer. I cut out tree trunks to create areas of light or dark, shining light through her images and putting my fingers into one. In another photograph of a cone of logs in the woods I made a small fire in my garden, photographing the real fire one evening on top of the photo of some logs. I put out the fire and then re-photographed this burnt image. I was exploring the liminal threshold using trees and wood and imagining a gateway to another place or sense.