There is something about a box, as you lift up or slide open the lid, that can transport you up to another lost world. You may find a hidden love letter (or a shopping list) secreted in a tiny drawer or slipped under the lining, a lost earring, or a dried flower given possibly by a long lost admirer. Treasures, loves, hopes and fears have been placed carefully or thrown willy-nilly into boxes of different sizes, shapes and purposes for thousands of years by women, men and children.
The other thing I collected as a child were books, preferably old second-hand ones. The first book I bought with my own money, aged eight, was a very tatty, broken spined copy of Dumas's The Man In The Iron Mask. I can still remember carrying it home with the pages falling out along the pavement, thinking that I had just bought the most precious thing possible. There is something about the printed page and especially an old printed page that is so very aesthetically pleasing... When I came across a very battered box one day, I decided to change its original function and add to it some pages from a similarly battered book and make something new and in someway rescue both.
I used to be an actress and found that I was very frustrated creatively when in between jobs. So I began to paint again, and to make things and write -- all things that didn't require a phone call from my agent to do. And it led to this.
Apart from the boxes and books I am inspired mostly by the sea, trees, the seasons, poetry and birds... Oh, and LOVE, of course!
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