From September 16th, Castle Park Arts Centre will play host to an exhibition and workshop event by artist Jackie Sumerfield, who will be sharing her passion for producing visual journals.

Since 2005, Jackie has been keeping her own journals, full of sketches, paintings, text and clippings, which evoke the events and emotion of everyday experience.

I spoke to Jackie about the origins of this long-running creative project.

"Like most people I have a lot of photo albums, and I also started cutting things out and sticking them in a scrapbook. Things like tickets and cards and photographs, ephemeral things that you collect. And because I'm an artist I always kept a sketchbook as well," she says.

Over a few years, these three modes of creation merged into one, moving away from text and towards a more image-based format.

"Gradually it became much more organised. I would think about the lettering and the layout a lot more, and that evolved into what I would call a 'journal', rather than just a scrapbook."

For Jackie, the journal is about "drawing the day. What am I doing? What am I seeing? What am I experiencing?"

"I don't rule out text, I do put a little text in, but it's the image that's paramount really," she explains.

"Then, if I'm visiting a place, like a garden or a house, I will make that into a double page and put photographs in it. Cut out bits of the leaflet from the house, put little sketches in from the garden..."

"When I think about why I do it, it isn't so much about storing memories. It can be a celebration of the past but I am a great believer in looking forward, and I think sometimes that if you keep a lot of memories, like photo albums and scrapbooks and journals, you have to be wary about dwelling and being too nostalgic. It tends to root you in the past. For me it's not about that, it's about recording that day."

Jackie works largely in watercolour, a medium which lends a sense of movement and transience to the images she captures.

"I like its fluidity. I like the fact that the water does the work, so you can have a very light touch with it and it creates the most beautiful pictures. It's lovely in that way. It's tremendously lively and energetic. There's something about the translucency of the paint that is so attractive," she explains.

The Exhibition

Jackie's exhibition will feature seven panels, which will take visitors on a "journey" through the development of her journal-making process.

Beginning with the question: "What is a journal?", you will then travel through more than a decade of personal creation, moving from Jackie's finished journals to the paintings inspired by her sketches and notes.

"I think it is always quite interesting to go to an exhibition and see an evolution. I find that people love looking at sketchbooks, seeing their unfinished ideas," Jackie says. She hopes that the informal, unpolished nature of some of her pieces will create an interactive, inclusive feel, inspiring others to produce their own journals.

As Jackie says, "I want people to look at my journals and think "I could do that; I could make one of those." Because they can!"

The Workshops

If the exhibition does pique your creative curiosity, you may be interested in the accompanying workshops, where Jackie will teach you how to begin keeping a beautiful journal of your own.

You do not need to be a skilled artist to profit from the session; just bring along a blank notebook and a pen and Jackie will offer "ideas and inspiration" for your own project.

"It's going to be your journal. It's going to be yours, full of whatever you want to put in it," from favourite recipes to Christening photos to sketches from a family holiday.

The exhibition will run from Wednesday 16th September until Wednesday 28th October, Tuesday to Saturday, 10am-4pm. Entry is free.

Workshops will be taking place on September 18th (7-9pm), September 19th (10am-12pm), October 6th (7-9pm), October 7th (10am-12pm), October 23rd (7pm-9pm) and October 24th (10am-12pm).

For more details, visit the Castle Park Arts Centre website or email Jackie at [email protected].

You can read more about Jackie's work on her website.