‘There is a profound connection between the nothingness from which we originate and the infinite in which we are engulfed.’
Prof. Jim Al Kalili

There is nothing here-
Everything is gone
Now there is space for-something
Anything can happen
Everything is happening
Nothing just- stops
Like the end of a ruler
Like a clock.
Where there is nothing
Something can happen
Everything is moving
There was something here-
Something has gone
Everything changes
Nothing remains
Nothing changes
In nothing, everything happens
Everything moves
Like the hands of a clock
Nothing never stops
Nothing is something
Nothing is everything
There is nothing here-




As I try to hold on tight to truth, to the past, to control the future, the momentary comfort I derive from a plausible certainty slips away. By embracing absence and taking things away, the emptiness remaining becomes an invitation for something else to happen, for something magical.
Everything is moving all of the time; the moment has already passed while we struggle with our labels and boxes, our charts, clocks and measuring sticks:
Stepping in and being a part of the process I am engaged and I am connected. I have disappeared, my surface has dissolved, I have expanded out of surety and stasis and can feel the edges of existence, draw across its surface till those edges disappear.

Everything is gone
There is nothing here


‘Space is fundamental in any exercise of power’
Foucault


This is the statement I submitted for my final show.
It s the document I spent most time on, in the run up to assessment and then didn't include in the show; too telling, too much of a signpost that there was actually work in the space I had occupied.
But I liked the writing process and wanted to share it; it responds to Baudrillard's degrees of simulcra, to Nancy's constantly fluid discourse, to Marcus Boon and the little Foucault I have read.

Working in an environment where I'm able to free the work from the plane and format of an 'a' sized piece of paper has helped shift some other givens, around which my work can orbit, if I'm not fully conscious.
I find myself becoming excited about drawing again, about discovery rather than moving toward a picture fixed in my head. One is not better than the other, but fully dismissing one for the other was capping a process.
Currently looking at cave painting and making efforts to understand more modern art movements. There's not alot of time for blogging, most reflection is made in the privacy of a small black notebook but will post more pictures soon.

I have a small catalogue of original seascape and garden paintings available. If anyone would like a copy please email your address to me at sarah.riseborough@btinternet.com.
The process of putting a catalogue together took a while; getting the images together and the information and I am very pleased with the result- thank you Kevin and Denise at Printspot for your patience!
The aim of the catalogue is to have the paintings out there working for me while I am working at university. I don't envisage approaching galleries or creating opportunities for the representational art while I am concentrating on the abstract work.
I intend to update my flickr page with more of an archive of abstract work, beginning with the first pieces and the ensuing developments. This is a bit of personal archaeology for me. I have been looking through notebooks and sketchbooks, sorting out bits of scrapbook material and filtering old, half-realised ideas and half-painted canvases. I have thrown out so much stuff! I must make space!
The new pictures on the blog are a sample of the abstract paintings, the white and gold being a detail from a later development. The image 'Composition: Squares' is being posted for purely economic reasons this week as I have a number of these prints left for sale and hope to finance my academic year with their sale. i will post dimensions and details next time.
For now, i hoe the posts will settle into something a little more coherent and orderly. i have my dance class term to begin planning and a commission to finish so still feel a little pulled in different directions; still, my attention span is not astonishingly long...

Finally got confirmation tonight that I'm going to finish the fine art degree I started in 1994. That's a small part of the story.
I WILL finish that commission before I go back, don't worry.
I must pick the threads back up and make some decisions I didn't take the first time round.
Hopefully, there will by blog progress reports.
Contest is the issue, the abstract work lost its value in my eyes, as it appeared to serve a personal purpose and had limited success in finding an audience to respond to it. It floated in space, unconnected to the past or the present, so had no place in the future. The works, visually, appeared solid and ancient, but transient and formless. I could not pin down a lineage, trace the ancestry and mine the mythology. I will post a few, over time- a bit of a back catalogue alongside a few statements.
xxx