RESIDENCY DIARY: Part 1….The Green Fuse and the Dragonfly
Back in Spring 2019, after two luminous years living and working in the electric sprawl of Shenzhen, I was invited to spend a couple of months at the serene and leafy Guanlan Printmaking Village. It was a kind of creative hibernation and awakening all at once — a chance to develop “The Dragonfly Diaries” and dig deep into my own artistic language after years of makeshift desks and borrowed studio corners. That residency sparked something potent. I still don’t fully understand what — only that it rearranged me in the best of ways.
When I came back to North Wales that summer, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Not just the residency, but that clear-headed creative flow — big paper, bold layers, time that felt slow and spacious. I nearly got back out a few times, but then Covid swept in and plans slipped away like ink in rinse water. At the start of this year, I quietly decided I’d try again. No big announcements, just a firm intention. And then — almost out of nowhere — an invitation arrived in January. A chance to return. Not to repeat what I’d done, but to carry on from where I left off, with everything I’d lived through in the meantime folded into the mix.
I hoped I could find that headspace again — the openness, the energy, the balance of play and purpose. But of course, a lot’s changed since 2019. Back then I’d just finished two years teaching kids in primary schools, soaking up their wild energy and the full-on sensory experience of the city. This time I arrived with five years of life behind me — studio insecurity, pandemic weirdness, a lot of personal and creative learning. I was still me, but a slightly more layered version. It wasn’t about getting back to how things were, but seeing what had grown since.
I’ll be honest — I was nervous. I’d been working mostly in risograph for the last few years, and it’s changed how I think about colour, texture and composition. I wasn’t sure how that would translate to the slower, more physical process of screenprint. Last time I worked in this amazing hybrid way — sketching, collaging, scanning, then shaping things digitally. This time, surrounded by banana trees, palm fronds and strawberry fields, with humidity curling every page and thought, I didn’t want to be on a screen at all.
I wanted ink under my nails. Scissors, glue, brushes. Something messier, more direct.
So I let myself change the plan. I still kept some of the structure — morning runs through the village, quiet meals, sketchbook walks under tropical skies. But I ditched the idea of trying to make a ‘Dragonfly Diaries Part Two’. Instead, I opened up Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, which had been gathering dust on my shelf for years, and gave it a proper go — morning pages, artist dates, the lot. It turned out to be exactly what I needed. Not more output, but a deeper kind of listening.
In the end, I packed tracing paper (essential), sundresses (mostly untouched), and an open mind. I tried to move with curiosity, not pressure. To follow the thing Dylan Thomas wrote about — “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Whatever that force is, I felt it again. In the mornings. In the ink. In the quiet confidence that something good was coming, even if I didn’t know what it was yet.
