I have probably only managed to spend a couple of hours on my own practice in the last couple of months and as we hurtle towards summer I am getting increasingly frustrated.
One thing I have been doing is completing activities from Miranda July's book Learning To Love You More. Having photographed under my bed using flash photography before cleaning (yuk!) I have now made a gallery of the artwork in my Mum's house that I grew up with. This has been a fascinating process as it has made me realise how much art surrounded me as a child and how that art has influenced my own interests and life choices. Here's a couple of examples:

One of my favorite paintings by my grandfather, Henry Hoyland. He loved the circus and spent many years painting portraits of the performers, but particularly the clowns. I grew up with a fascination for the circus and it led me to leave London for Bristol to train as a trapeze artist, something I did for many years.
A Mexican angel. I remember there being a lot of Mexican art around the house as a child. A couple of years ago I unexpectedly inherited some money and decided what I really wanted to do was realise a long-standing ambition and travel around Mexico with my family, which we did. I now wonder how much this artwork influenced that desire.

I know it was over a month ago now but this is the first chance I've had to get back to my own work since Spike Open, including updating my blog. After much deliberation I ended up showing a piece that developed out of my shift in thinking around Heavy Words, the project about cervical cancer, and connects with the writing of poet Julia Darling whose work has influenced me.

The piece consists of a large photographic print of a window with the words 'we are all indelible, miraculous, here' written in dust on the window sill beneath. Some people liked it, some felt the text was unnecessary, one person thought it was a painting and others missed it altogether.
After last year's Open Studios I made a decision not to hide my own unfinished work in the shadow of a participatory piece, one that gave focus to the audience's musings on what they had left unfinished. I would think big and try and overcome my anxiety about showing my work. However, in hindsight I realise that scale isn't everything! In a shared studio space my work was still somehow hidden. I'll keep trying.