Mary Sewell – As Above so Below

I am a visual artist working from my studio, an old cutlery factory in Sheffield. I paint using oils, collage, text from poems I have written and found objects to experiment with processes and ideas. I am interested in what is hidden, invisible or yet unformed and the relationship between that inner and the outer space.

We think we are born into a world that already exists, but whose world do we enter? Is my world your world or does ‘the world’ collectively consist of millions of individual minds or worlds?

My mind would and will, wander and whirl and while away the hours, no stone unturned, exploring a landscape within.
Below, snapshots of a dream from the night before flash past like a subliminal image in a film.
Below, my body is speaking not in words, more a humming
or sometimes thrashing about like a child that doesn’t know what anger is.
Below, there are thoughts that I can’t catch: lumps of rock, hard, black like basalt. They are not yet mine to see.
Below the sediment
Below
Belo
Bel
Be
B

The voice box paintings are a meditation on inner and outer worlds. The paintings symbolise the throat, voice, emotion and what is said or not said. They explore how the unconscious presides within, in tandem with everyday life and how the two spaces or worlds exist and work together simultaneously.

I have an allotment and often feel pulled between the time I spend in the allotment and the time I spend in my studio. I am always uncovering rusty treasures from the ground and in the same way I feel compelled to dig the ground, I feel a pull within to connect with layers of consciousness and the enormity of the inner world

Creativity and the action of doing gives focus to my energy and slows down my thought process and my busy mind, so that I become absorbed in the moment and what I am doing. Frantic thought shrivels away into my preferred state of mind. A more mindful place and a space I can inhabit.

Find Mary here: www.marysewell.co.uk