28/03/2026
I’ve been wanting to share a bit of the process behind the work for my upcoming show, because a lot of it is quite invisible.
Making these cyanotypes has been much harder than I expected. Being an artist and a mum, working four days a week, and trying to find time around everything else — it’s meant making work in fragments, in between, late at night or early in the morning. A lot of days and evenings have been sacrificed, and I haven’t been sleeping much.
The process starts long before the prints themselves. Selecting the images has been a process in itself. I didn’t want to use straightforward, clear photographs — I wanted to stay true to my way of working. Most of my images use double exposure, so they’re already layered, slightly obscured, not immediately readable. Turning those into negatives and printing them onto acetate has been time-consuming, and sometimes unpredictable, because the images aren’t simple to translate into this process.
Then the fabrics need to be prepared — washed, dried, ironed. I didn’t even have an iron, so I had to borrow one from a friend. It’s been a lot of small, practical steps before even getting to the image.
Then there’s the making. Carrying large sheets of glass and plywood in and out, setting everything up, packing it away again. I don’t have a garden, so everything has to be moved each time. I’ve cut my hands more than once on the glass.
And then the weather… cyanotypes depend on light, and the last few weeks have been unpredictable. Sunny when I’m working, grey and foggy when I’m free. So I’ve had to work around that, sometimes coating everything in the dark, turning my space into a temporary darkroom, sitting in it quietly while things dry.
Then carrying everything back, washing, waiting, drying… and not always knowing how it will turn out.
I think I just wanted to share that this work has taken a lot — physically, emotionally, and practically. And a lot of that labour doesn’t show when you see the final pieces.
But it’s all there, in the fabric.
If you’d like to see the work, the opening night is on 3 April from 18:00 at Electro Studios, Hastings — you’re very welcome to come along ❤️