Maintenance sits at the centre of my practice. Much of my life seems to involve it, and I wonder more and more about where the work of maintaining a life ends and the making of my Art begins.
From making the bed and preparing meals to washing clothes, cleaning, dressing, and caring for the cat, everyday routines leave little time to simply be, let alone produce what is conventionally understood as artwork.
I have become interested in what happens when those distinctions dissolve. Instead of working around the rhythms of everyday life, I allow them to shape the work itself.
The Wash exhibition brought this idea into focus through figurative paintings of laundry hanging on a line, installed alongside carefully ironed and folded garments or ordinary domestic objects, including a nappy bucket.
Since then my paintings have developed into a more abstract language. There are still figurative elements – recognisable images that appear alongside fragments of text, lists, tickets, and other traces of ordinary life.
These paintings often begin on the kitchen floor or worktop, where they are walked over, stained, covered, or marked through use. Coffee, food, dust, and the residue of daily routines become collaborators in the making of the surface. The paintings highlight and celebrate the marks that everyday life leaves behind: Stains on clothing, accidental spillages, worn paintwork, and dusty or neglected corners.
Recently I have experimented with heavily pigmented food and drink to stain and discolour the canvas, exploring the parallels between painting and the slow accumulation of marks through everyday living and use.
Through painting, I draw attention to these overlooked moments, asking whether the quiet labour of maintenance might itself be understood as a creative act.
Deborah And Sedgwick 