Jo Ball
My practice moves between painting, three-dimensional drawing and writing, with each informing and responding to the other. Over the last two years, my work has shifted towards painting. I am currently making abstract, colourful works using oils on paper combined with screenprinted elements. Memories of flowers and plants are a starting point for my use of colour, which develops through the physical process of mixing, layering and applying paint. Alongside these works on paper, I create linear clay forms — hooked lines and loops — that exist as works in their own right, while also generating projected shadows that become starting points for new painted compositions.
I am interested in how forms shift through different materials, processes and ways of looking. The work develops through experimentation, allowing colour, shape and unexpected outcomes to guide the making process. My writing, often taking the form of fragmented observations, dreams and reflections, emerges from the same attention that shapes my visual work — to the allotment, birds, family life and the small details of daily experience.
Lived Experience
Alongside being an artist, I work as a gardener and am also a mother. All these experiences feed into my writing and visual practice, shaping the way I observe and respond to the world around me.
I’m autistic, and am drawn to patterns, small details and repetitive making processes. These ways of seeing naturally influence the materials, forms and approaches within my practice.
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