Waiting & Making

Like everyone else, artists must deal with the things that life throws at them while trying to keep up with work. During difficult times, creativity can ebb and flow: sometimes it’s the thing that keeps us going, and at others it becomes hard to hold onto.

I always dream of horses, 2025 (animation still)

 

After being admitted to Accident & Emergency almost two years ago, doctors gave me medicines that stabilised my health condition and I was then put onto the NHS waiting list for surgery. The ‘average waiting time’ of twenty weeks I was informed of was woefully inaccurate and I was left hanging for a whopping eighty-two and a half weeks (on top of a prior eight-week wait to see a consultant before that).

 

Waiting without an end in sight is its own kind of agony and I found that the stress of the situation had a big effect on what I was able to do. In attempting to look after my mental health throughout the uncertainty of this time, I tried to keep drawing and making art as a way of taking myself away from the constant worry.

 

While I carried on working on my day job of marketing for arts organisations and project managing a lovely arts and health project, I didn’t have much capacity left over for the admin side of being an artist. Although I love writing my blog and newsletter, I found that it was a bit too much to try and do this on top of making work and applying for exhibitions.

 

I tried to spend some time each week undertaking something creative; doing some drawing, making a couple of linocut prints or playing around with words, and eventually I hit a groove and began to make a new animated piece of work. After some trial and error, I used some of the circus drawings I had already made as a starting point and developed an idea about childhood interests and obsessions.

 

This grew into a hand-drawn animation called I always dream of horses, which has been accepted for the Open Screen event at the 2026 Borderlines Film Festival. It’s a very personal piece of work, so I was delighted that it resonated with the film festival’s selection panel.

 

As I worked on the animation, painstakingly drawing each frame of a horse’s movement, my mind was completely focussed, and I felt the strain of waiting leave me. It was time spent outside of time, when there’s a flow to an activity that stops the brain from thinking about the past, the future or current worries, but just allows a person to be completely in the moment. I feel very lucky to have something in my life that enables this, and it certainly helped me to cope through a period of life-on-hold. 

I always dream of horses, 2025 (animation still)

 

Another thing that I found invaluable was support within the artist community where I live. I continued to engage with a brilliant group of artists in Hereford, on an ongoing project called Artlandish, and submitted some of my videos and drawings to their shows. I also carried on meeting with Imposure, a small group of female artists who come together to share ideas and test out work. We’ve made an exhibition together, held studio visits and ‘play days’ when we experiment with materials, and applied for a group show with new work and ideas. Talking to people who understand my thinking and challenge it is incredibly important in developing new ideas.

 

I am now ten weeks post-op and feeling much stronger as each week passes. I didn’t find the energy to make things while I was initially recovering, but I fed my imagination with a diet of good books, classic films and gentle television series. I’m now learning more about music production and songwriting at an evening course at Hereford College of Arts in order to give me more skills to use in my film soundtracks.

 

Waiting and worrying is no fun, but creativity has helped me through these long months. In a few weeks, I will watch I always dream of horses on the big screen with my family at Borderlines and be grateful for them and for being an artist, with all that it brings to my life.

 

I always dream of horses will be shown as part of Open Screen, a selection of short films by regional filmmakers, at Borderlines Film Festival on Sunday 8 March at 1:30pm at the Courtyard, Hereford and on Friday 13 March 2026 6:00pm at Ludlow Assembly Rooms. More information and booking links here.