‘Preparations For The Big Wide World’

This series of drawings began during the lockdown of 2020 and show teenage girls leaping, dancing and practicing gymnastics in the enclosed spaces of their back gardens.

Already interested in movement and what occurs within the body during acrobatic, risk-taking behaviour, something about the core strength of these young women repetitively driving themselves to succeed, to express their frustrations and release their pent-up energy struck a nerve in Stroude.

It appeared to her that they were developing skills and preparing themselves physically, emotionally and mentally for the world that waited for them beyond the confinement of their gardens.

She began to explore the building of resilience through physical activity in her drawing work and look at how the energy of that activity could be described visually. How does a body hold space? How can space hold a body? Frozen in unsustainable moments the figures are enlivened by the energy and looseness of the marks made to describe their surrounding environments, the places that contained them but also offered them a certain personal freedom.

With sincere thanks to Anna King, Andrea King and Zara Brennan for contributing source materials for this series of drawings.