It's finally here a collection I've put my whole heart into. When filming The Outstanding Artist it brought a lot of emotion out that I didn't know I have and honestly I'm still trying to understand why and where it stems from.
I've had a lot of really tough times in my life, the biggest being loosing my mum at a young age and I've always had to pick myself up off the floor to build again.
I felt like life is out to get me, that I'm being punished for something but I think that its life testing us, making you stronger and teaching you resilience.
We wouldn't be who we are without these challenges and life experiences today.
This collection has a lot to do with that, resilience. We need resilience. We have to take those moments and those challenges by the hand and grow. Spread your wings and fly.
I have decided to write a poem with each painting and I asked my dad to write one as well to see how they make him feel as we all experience paintings differently.
'The moment it crashes to the earth,
it vanishes before our eyes
the emptiness,
the loneliness.
We do not flee the storm.
We rise on it.
We are free
when we believe,
when we love our inner self,
when we stop shrinking.
At the highest point
the full heart,
afraid the world will steal it.
Our life has seasons.
Cold is met with warmth.
The sky opens
when we stop fighting'
By Eleanor Birch
'From afar I see you soar, mastering the firmament.
Intimate with its currents that lift and drop but never break you.
You go with the flow, but instinctively as one with the air, riding its turbulence with grace.
As if surfing on Gods breath.
For we groundlings, tis beauty to behold.
Yet no indulgent recreational jaunt.
No aerial ballet for you.
This is very life.
And then you come, out of the sun, transformed laser like your return to earth.
To take what you must have to survive, for your family.
But this is not your real strength I see. How many times must you flap and struggle to ascend again and again before you can even eat.
You are created to struggle, unwavering, gifted, a survivor.
Only then to soar with the souls, a rapturous raptor'
By Ian Birch
