My ‘keeping time’ pieces are a way of providing a counter culture message against our modern day society’s obsession with ‘time keeping’. The series offers visual images about ‘keeping time’ – thinking, sensing and marking the passing of time. These timed, walking pieces – ‘walking The Reichstag’ and ‘walking Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirchewere’ – started during a holiday in Berlin in April 2017. The walking pieces tell extremely ‘slow time’ – they were made firstly by slow walking so that the paper takes on the memory of the walking process and is left with the imprint of the footsteps and the indentation of the walked surface. Mark making was later created slowly and reflectively on the walking pieces, as time reveals itself, offering an invitation to the audience to slow down, pause and reflect. The final piece is the culmination of the slow walking followed by the slow mark making, which presents the on-going process of keeping time.

This echoes the wisdom of the Chinese philosopher, Laozi. ‘The Way’ is something we can actively generate ourselves, in the here and now, all the time, at every moment. We each have the potential to transform the worlds in which we live. Zhuangzi’s philosophy on ‘Transformation’ teaches us that true imagination and creativity don’t come out of great disruptive moments that break forth from an otherwise ordinary, drab life. They are part and parcel of how we live our every day; all moments can be creative and spontaneous when we experience the entire world as an open and expansive place. Shifting our perspective – walking and observing the world around us with care – allows us to experience life with newness and intensity. We get there through the constant work of keeping ourselves open to everything, moving spontaneously with the Way and becoming an active part of the transformation of things.