“Being creative, imagining, and thinking of ways to express oneself, is part and parcel of our humanity – as is our “need” for being outside, for walking, and for connecting with others”
Alex Jakob-Whitworth is an interpretative artist, who primarily, though not solely, works through painting, making and poetry. She has been selected for the ‘Artful Cumbria’ commission. Alex’s proposed work will take a 3D sculptural form and will seek to represent the themes from Artful Ways participants’ responses.
Alex’s creative practice involves connecting with the wider community in dialogue, workshops, or through audience. For her commission piece she will look for commonalities, and for the wider diversity of responses to Artful Ways and aim to build a visual and written response using the theme of a doorway – a portal, and a “Cabinet of Muses” – thinking about transition, change, moving through, and the psychological and emotional shift we make as we traverse states of mind – as well as our physical travels.
Alex studied Fine Art at Leeds and has an MA in Art and Psychotherapy. She has been working freelance as an artist and creative practitioner since 2002 and has taught art in a variety of educational settings. Her practice has a strong community element and she works to bring art to different sectors of the community – including health, education, wildlife charities, cultural organisations and village settings. She regularly gives talks, holds art workshops and courses and exhibits paintings.
Alex is inspired by living in, travelling through and engaging with the landscape of Cumbria – its shapes and moods, its heritage and culture; the temporal expressed in the spatial. Her work is concerned with exploring the human condition, in our relationship with the land, often through the metaphor of the landscape and the horse. She began her JourneyWoman project as part of This Girl Did – a celebration of women mountaineers. The project brings together performance and paintings inspired by the words and walks of Dorothy Wordsworth.
