ENTRY STATEMENT
I rarely get brave enough to enter competitions, but this struck a personal chord. I saw the competition by chance, and I say that ‘art saves me’ on a regular basis, so it stopped me in my tracks...
Like too many women, I live with severe endometriosis, (a hormonal disease which fuses organs together and causes great pain and for which there is no cure or real treatment) I love ballet, but I had to stop dancing many years ago, because my body just wouldn’t keep up after a certain level. However, having also loved art since I could remember, I turned to art and in that I found a way to keep dance in my life and art became my 'rock'. 
I spent some years working in an art gallery - where I met the most supportive and strong people, in both the artists and the people who love it. Humble and kind, they gave me confidence to try and I began building works focused solely on dance. I have an endless response to dance, an urge to capture what a dancer spends years perfecting, each beautiful gesture and each moment filled with strength, focus, and passion, the choreography and music creating sacred geometry that fills my heart. 
I decided I had to share the joy that brings me and I had a first little exhibition just before lockdown, I loved it, and it felt like I had started a really exciting dialogue on this wonderful subject.
After lockdown handed me a 'break' in the form of two major surgeries, I started to dip my tentative toes back in to the work a few months ago and now I’ve built new works, and even started to sculpt... a thing I never thought I’d be ‘good enough’ at. 
I completed ‘Odette - A Study’ a small set of works, including drawings, a painting and a sculpture of Fumi Kaneko in the role of Odette in The Royal Ballet’s Swan Lake, a couple of months ago, for me, Odette is an inspiring character, she is so brave and good, even when hope is lost. 
I have hope now though, and hopefully a thousand works ahead of me, each one filling my heart and literally getting me out of bed every day with purpose and for someone who chronic disease has taken so much autonomy and hope away from, this truly has saved my life.
Art is a conversation across language barriers, across distance, and across adversity. Even in my tiny little corner of the world, my work has already connected me with supportive dancers and people who love dance, we’ve been to the theatre together and shared the joy of dance. I now have things to look forward to again, I truly worried that would never happen. But a few lines of lead, sincerely scribbled, go a long way. I wanted to at least share that truth about art and I figured this was a good time to be brave and talk about it... I’m amazed by it every day. In the dancers, in myself and in other wonderful artists.
Samantha
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