Mid West Art Prize 2023 - Finalist

Returning Home is an ink-on-paper Soulcircle that reflects the layered experience of coming back - not only to a physical place, but to oneself.

This work also reflects my ongoing interest in how art creates a felt experience within a space. I am drawn to how a single work can influence pace, attention and quiet reflection - particularly in places of transition, where people are moving rather than lingering. Returning Home holds an invitation to pause, to notice, and to reconnect, allowing the surrounding space to become part of the work itself.

While the work is informed by memories of returning to the place where I grew up, it speaks more broadly to a quieter, inner journey. A return to what is familiar beneath the surface. A remembering of self beyond movement, time, or distance.

The circular form holds both motion and stillness, echoing the way we travel outward in life and, at certain moments, feel drawn back to an inner centre. For me, Returning Home is about that point of arrival where nothing needs to be proven or resolved. Just recognised.

I was honoured for this work to be selected as a finalist in the Midwest Art Prize 2023. To have Returning Home acknowledged within a regional context that has shaped both my life and practice felt particularly meaningful, a gentle closing of a circle, and the opening of another.