How I fell in love with Keys, and why it has influenced my Art
The story of how I fell in love with old keys began when I was a child of about 5 years old back in the late 1980’s/ early 90’s, when my family and I lived in an old Victorian house. My mum bought me a pair of school shoes which came with a toy key, the brand was Clarks Magic Steps, and was marketed with an advert that had a little girl wearing the shoes and being transformed into a magical world. You can find the original advert on YouTube. I vaguely remember being in the shoe shop and choosing the shoes and trying them on. The key absolutely fascinated me and I fell in love with it. It turned a lock inside the shoe which revealed magical picture on the sole. I felt like this key was so magical, and I have memories of playing with it and carrying it around with me. I also have a memory from that time of a jewelled key brooch we had in the house probably given to one of us by a grandparent, that I claimed and also used to play with.
Around that time within a couple of years or so, I visited the Moyses Hall Museum in my home town of Bury St Edmunds. In there I saw glass cabinets filled with old rusty keys large and small, most of which were probably excavated from the ruins of the famous Abbey. These keys captured my imagination, and left me wondering what these keys might unlock, were they rooms? Or were they chests containing treasures or secrets? Ever since then keys have been an intriguing symbol of mystery to me, which could unlock exciting possibilities, both in the physical sense and the metaphorical.
Over the years as I became an adult, keys started to re-appear in my awareness, particularly in the village my family moved to, when I became fascinated with a framed flatlay of keys on the wall of the local pub, the Plough Inn, Rede, a 16th century Inn. Keys started to appear in my artwork around 2015.
At the beginning of 2020 just before the lockdown, I felt a strong urge to draw keys. When lockdown set in, I realised as I sat sketching out the keys that it was rather profound and synchronistic that I should be drawing keys in a LOCK-down, and the challenging situation that was upon us all inspired me to think about the effect that having a forced change in lifestyle and having to stop and/or slow down might have, and how it might then get people thinking about their lives now that they had more time to do things at home having been furloughed. I observed that people were now filling their time doing things that they had thought they never had time for before, like trying new hobbies and exploring their surroundings and nature that was on their doorstep during their allowed daily walks, and the effect it had when people could enjoy a more relaxed pace of life, despite having to stay home now that they had no daily grind and pressure to go out to work temporarily. I thought it interesting that a scenario such as this would cause people to think now about how different life could be now that they had time to stop and think, and that some had perhaps been enlightened by this whole experience and now wanted to create new habits and change their lives for the better. Out of a negative situation could come a positive change of direction that could lead to a more contented and happy life. I came up with a series of 21 Key drawings, all named after a possible experience, realisation, feeling, thought, event or situation that may have come about which may not have done had it not been for the lock down. I intended for this series of drawings to mark or serve as a reminder that something positive can come from a negative situation, a set of metaphorical keys to unlock mindsets and open them up to a new and more positive way of thinking and feeling.
Although I continued create artwork with keys for their meaning and symbolism, I create it for the love and nostalgia of it too. My drawings and paintings of randomly placed keys (known as a flatlay) are inspired by the frame of keys that hung on a wall of the pub in the village I lived in. I absolutely loved this frame of random keys and would often look at it, wondering what these keys once opened. I loved the pub too and spent many happy times in there with the other locals. The artwork represents lot of particularly fond memories, feelings and nostalgia attached to my fascination of keys, home, and all things old.
The fusion of love and nostalgia with meaning and symbolism of keys connected to my own life experience has evolved and is developing in an interesting direction that is unfolding as I go along with it, enabling me to express my voice as an artist and offer my perspective, values and beliefs in a way that I hope can be of benefit in some way all who are drawn to my artwork.