When I first bought a camera back in 2019 and began taking pictures of flowers, I would never have thought it would dramatically affect the rest of my life. I was writing for the Cumbria Guide magazine at the time and I only bought a camera because I was a little over taking phone images that were not fit to go to print if I went out on a job.   

Only the year before, Kerry had picked up the paintbrushes again after a long hiatus when she was inspired by her muse, our much-loved Greyhound Gary.  COVID came along and she kept painting dogs and I spent a lot of time in the garden taking pictures of flowers.

We were delighted when local artist, Daniel Ibbotson, asked us to submit a few pieces in the first Proseed popup exhibition in the aftermath of the pandemic in Carlisle. It was astonishing that someone felt our hobbies were worthy of showing to other people and Kerry also sold a picture of Gary which was exciting.

We’ve both expanded and developed our work over the years, we’ve kept showing pieces as part of the Proseed collective and created our own exhibition at The Gather in Ennerdale.  Yesterday was something else though when we took a ferry into Venice to see our collaborative piece on the walls of an art gallery in the world-famous Biennale.

This was my third trip to Venice and I have a very strange affection for the place.  The first time I went was 2022 to meet Daniel Ibbotson as he took a month in the canal city to create his own solo piece for the Biennale.  I’d recently done a photography course in the lakes where I’d learnt a lot in a short time and I consider that trip to Venice to be the turning point of my photography.  I got to wander the city before the crowds filled the streets, learnt what type of images I like to take, capture Dan’s work as it came together, wrote an article documenting it and experimented with multiple exposures for the first time. Some of those images are scattered through this blog.

The second trip was with Kerry on our 20^th anniversary and was also very much an attempt to make up to her that I’d initially gone to Venice without her.

If the last three months has been all about this road trip, then the first three months of the year were all about creating this piece for Venice.  During the darkest days of the UK winter, we discussed and dismissed ideas, tried different concepts and wrestled with the exhibition theme of ‘Foreigners Everywhere’. 

Trying to combine digital and painted images was not easy, nor was combining two different approaches to creating art.  Kerry will work slowly towards her desired end product, while I tend to follow quick flashes of inspiration that soon fade away.  My style normally leads me to look at one of my images the next day and think it’s pure shite, but in the case of this image, I was as delighted viewing it yesterday as I was the moment it was finished back in February. 

We must have dedicated over a hundred hours creating something we were happy with.  There were certainly some frustrations too but in the end the combination of two minds created something that was better than only one alone.

But ours was only one piece amongst forty other artists, and as happy as we were to see our on the wall it must be said that the whole Proseed work stunning.

So tomorrow we start heading for home in a van that has had a brake pad warning light on since Greece and something strange happening with the clutch that has flummoxed an Italian mechanic.  Wish us luck.