When a person has difficult experiences in their past that impinge upon the present, it’s common to question how much of one’s life or personality or identity has been shaped by those experiences. It is complex and confusing to try and parse out what life would be without them, and yet it is completely understandable to want to imagine a life free from them. This EP is a musical exploration of how echoes/reflections of the past affect our imagination of the future, or intrude on the present, and how we might reframe that in helpful/hopeful ways.

My work often begins with fragments: drawings, paintings, writings, and marks that resist forming a complete narrative. For this commission, I want to explore reflection as a slow and ongoing process of piecing together these fragments. Working with fragile rice paper, stitched fabric, and layered marks on a scroll allows me to move gently between past and present, creating a space to consider how memory, identity, and emotional experience continue to shape us over time.

The first year after my son was born was the most significant, beautiful and challenging period of my life. Yet so much of it feels blurred by exhaustion, sleeplessness and the relentless pace of early motherhood. As time passes, I find myself trying to hold onto memories, emotions and moments that already feel as though they are slipping away. This project is a way of reflecting on that year and preserving it. Through a series of 12 artworks, I will revisit each month of my postpartum experience using diary entries, photographs, personal documents and collected memories. I want to explore the emotional realities of motherhood, the shifts in identity that accompany it and the impact it can have on mental health. By making this work, I hope not only to create a record of a transformative time in my own life, but also to offer a sense of recognition and connection for others who have experienced the complexities of becoming a parent.

How can you reconnect with your childhood self when so little of the current you reflects the person you were raised to be? Drawing on my experience of growing up as a closeted trans woman, this work is an attempt to gather and hold the troubling web of contradictions and frustrations which characterise my own, and many other trans people’s, relationship to our younger self. An attempt to reclaim, reimagine, and reintegrate my childhood self with love, care, and forgiveness.

My commission will explore mental health through the lens of my on/off relationship with Warhammer, a hobby I loved intensely as a boy between the ages of 11 and 13, before bullying forced me to abandon it. Returning to the hobby aged 47, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I enjoy it as much as I did over 35 years ago, and have now found a community transformed into a much more inclusive space, welcoming people of all ages, genders, and backgrounds. I intend to explore how the rich visual language of Warhammer can mirror the universal mental health experiences of loss, shame, rediscovery, and acceptance.

As someone with complex PTSD, reflection is both difficult and inherent. I literally cannot help but look back over and over so I have learnt to mingle in the positive with the negative. Focusing on only the positives just isn’t realistic for many of us with mental illness and there are many people with mental illness that will never “get better”. I think that is essential to represent in art. My goal is to get the audience to reflect on how a life with all these dark memories and focuses is still a life worth continuing.