This episode features Elizabeth Hockney, a part-time doctor, whose passion for photography has added colour and vibrancy to her life. She shares her journey to creating more abstract and painterly images.
Elizabeth talks about the importance of finding a group of like-minded people - your tribe - to share and grow with,
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
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https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
This episode features Elizabeth Hockney, a part-time doctor, whose passion for photography has added colour and vibrancy to her life. She shares her journey to creating more abstract and painterly images.
Elizabeth talks about the importance of finding a group of like-minded people - your tribe - to share and grow with,
Sign up to the next Creative Light Festival here:
https://creative-light.co.uk/
Sign up to my newsletter to hear first about new retreats:
Follow me on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/margaretsoraya/
Join my online Creative Haven community :
https://creative-haven.newzenler.com
I've got Elizabeth Hockney with me today, all the way from London, and Elizabeth is part of my membership group online, creative Haven, and she has been with us for quite a few years, so I've got to know Elizabeth quite well and I really wanted her to come on to chat with me about her progress in photography and creative life, because she has developed so much in the time that I've known her and I think it's quite interesting for other people to hear about your journey a little bit, elizabeth, so thank you for joining me.
Speaker 2:It's pleasure. Thank you for asking me.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we'll maybe just kick off a little bit by just saying a little bit about what you do and what you're drawn to and where you are at the moment, whatever you feel like sharing in terms of where you are now and how your life looks.
Speaker 2:So I suppose that the things that are big parts of my life at the moment are family work and being outside my gardens, and photography, of course, although that does get squeezed into a small part of my life.
Speaker 1:And that's much really nice to hear, isn't it? Because I think you know we've all got lives, haven't we? We've got real lives. And to think that we can just be creative all week Some people can because they're doing it professionally. But even actually I'm talking nonsense. I'm doing this professionally. I don't get to be creative all week. I get to be creative more than normal people, but I still are a massive bulk of admin to do so. There is that sort of day job aspect to it. But for you you're a doctor, aren't you? I'm a?
Speaker 2:doctor. Yes, yeah, well, part time now, so I do have a bit more time than I used to. It's quite intense. It has been quite intense. It's better balanced now but I found the photography in their creativity has been something that that's actually even though I don't spend a lot of the week doing it.
Speaker 2:The little nuggets have become really valuable and I think that's probably what I've learned most in the last few years, because before that, because I was sort of thick when I was thinking about coming and talking to you, I was thinking about my sort of photography journey since I was quite young and I've enjoyed photography since I was a teenager. But when I look at where it fitted into life before, it was holidays really, it was holiday photography, it was storytelling about my travels, writing photography, making videos, and then it sort of all changed when. I suppose it all changed really. Yeah, I had a bit of time off work when I wasn't wasn't very well, and then going back to work and I think you've heard this story before, but hearing Sam Gregory talking and then hearing you talking and then following links, just really anything that I heard, that I thought, well, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2:It was locked down, I had time and I followed it and I just just kept going in lots of different directions and I actually did a little, like I said, a mind map of it, and I thought, gosh, there's so much I've done in the last few years and it's just been amazing because it's just opened so many doors and so many ideas and I think that's what I think has been particularly successful about you is that you've, as you said, you've followed that intuitive I suppose, responding to something that somebody said or you've heard or you've thought about, and you've just let that.
Speaker 1:You've let that go, almost without having a plan of I want to achieve this and if I don't achieve this I'm not going to, I'm not going to succeed in whatever you want to succeed in. So you've kind of and I've seen you do that you've allowed yourself to follow that path sort of almost intuitively and it's sort of taking you around in this big not it's not a circle actually, because you've been quite consistent about it, but I think, a realisation that actually the garden is the gardens, where it's that for you, and that's just been, it's been a joy to watch. And I think the other thing to say about what you just said there was that when you said before it was holidays and now do you mean that you're now interspersing that into your life in all the time, but in small portions?
Speaker 2:Exactly exactly. And I think that's also probably one of the reasons that I'm drawn to the style of photography that I do, because I love beautiful landscape photographs, I love beach scenes, I love all those things, but it's not practical, it's not, it doesn't. I haven't got the time to research places to go and get up at sunrise and it just doesn't fit into life, whereas my garden I love, it's there, I can just see something and say, oh, I'll just go and get the camera and I have 15 minutes and it's just fantastic. And also the sort of more abstract ICM creative style. I suddenly discovered it that I can do it on holiday, walking around Venice. I just have my camera with a three neutral density filter on and I can take ICM photographs just as I'm walking around. And it was liberating because I thought I can do this in bright sunshine, I can do it on a dull rainy day not a rainy day, but I can do it on a dull day.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of it in Harris and the most photographers would say, well, mid-summer in Harris is not the time for photographers, but I took loads of photographs and also the sort of the attraction of the more the looser painterly style that appeals very much to me. That's probably because I'm quite a visual color orientated person. It was you who pointed out the color. Actually I don't know if you remember that you pointed out there's a lot of color at your photographs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was way back when we did the finding your voice online course, and I do remember because I do remember everyone actually that I've taught, and it's that trying to explore deeper, isn't it? And trying to find what I'm always talking about. I sometimes feel like I get a bit repetitive, but I do believe that we begin to look like our photographs or art, and if we could actually that's the ultimate goal of we can I'm not saying you're blurry, elizabeth, blurring in red. Your personality really suits that kind of free flowing, creative, natural garden garden work that you're doing and that might you might see that evolve into different types of art now, and I can sort of feel that coming for you. But it's such a wonderful thing to get to that place, isn't it, where you feel like you're in line with what you're photographing, you're getting this joy from it and also, as you pointed out, going to anywhere. You can photograph anywhere, then, and be content, exactly.
Speaker 2:But it's happened very quickly and it's not you know, I would say it's really probably started last November after the Creative Light Festival. Because, thinking back to when I came to Harris with you last March, march 22, I didn't, I didn't know what I was doing. I felt I really didn't know what I was doing. And then suddenly I think a bit of it was also slightly overcoming what I felt other people would think of it. Because I know some people things to the ring in your ears, a bit of people saying I don't really understand ICM or I don't see the point of ICM, and you think, oh gosh, that seems to be what I like. And then you've just got to get over that and say, well, actually I'm not a street photographer, I'm not hard image person, that's me. So what if I enjoy this? And it's just getting over that and saying I'm not doing this to self-hosegrass, I'm not doing this to have a wonderful website, I'm just doing this because for now, this makes me feel good, I like it, I enjoy it, it's a hobby.
Speaker 1:Which is lovely to hear actually because, as you know, there's we all have. So I was going to ask you actually because I kind of knew that and I think that's lovely for a lot of the listeners to hear that you're doing it because it makes you happy, it brings you joy and it also it opens your awareness, it gets you out, it brings you gratitude, all of these things and I can see that in you as you're photographing, because we actually met recently, came over to the house and I can sort of feel that from you there's a joy in your creativity and I just wondered if it's like a mindful thing, is it a well-being thing?
Speaker 2:It is very much so and I think, for a lot of people, if they've had a time when they don't feel so well, and also COVID, I think for a lot of people made them really sort of look at themselves and what gives them joy, what sort of they can get out of the here and now, what was around us. Yeah, we were very, all, very limited and I certainly learned that and I've managed to carry that on and having always really felt I needed to be traveling, traveling, traveling, and that was what was sort of it was what was the next holiday. I'm getting a little bit back into that, but there's much more contentment with just being here and now and that's really nice. It's really nice. It's more relaxing, yes, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 1:I'm similar. Actually, it's the funny thing. I'm kind of starting to think, maybe a little bit of traveling now, you know, but I wondered whether that was just me and where I am in my time, my time of life and place of life at the moment. But I think that I think that time during COVID, really, what I noticed everybody suddenly reached for creativity. It was like a mass kind of like. Everybody was in distress of some sort. You know, there was some kind of pressure on us because we weren't living normally. And isn't it interesting that during those times that's when people go we need to be creative, and that's not a coincidence, as it's a human nature and actually, in some ways it's probably.
Speaker 1:it's probably quite helpful, because a lot of people did suddenly join these things online and what's lovely to see is it's led to this wonderful path to where you are now. So I just think that's it was a bit of a shock to us, but it's in those hard times, isn't it, that we make these changes, and if we don't have those hard times or those times of searching, we maybe never have never found what you found. So there's gratitude to be found in hard times as well. So I know I reach for creativity whenever I'm struggling with whatever I'm struggling with. You know, with the time, always I need to go and do something. Sometimes I need to go and make a little video. Sometimes I need to go and photograph, paint, whatever it is, but it's it's nice that that's also helped you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'll often come back from work you know, along day at the surgery and I'll come back and I'll have supper and then I'll just go and sit and look at photographs and maybe sort of fiddle around a bit. So and that's just my sort of way of decompressing a bit Well, especially with that sort of high pressure job.
Speaker 1:I would imagine it's quite high pressure. I don't think I could do it.
Speaker 2:Sure, you could.
Speaker 1:So tell me about the time that you came to Harris this summer, did you? How did you get on with the flowers? Because what was interesting was I've also been doing a marker project this well, I call it a marker project. I've actually been writing an article for outdoor photography magazine, but also I'm trying to produce a book on the marker or the flowers. It's very unusual for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Gosh, this feels I can't believe it. Someone who doesn't enjoy gardening and brilliant.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I'm not a gardener, but I do think that there's this real great thing about saying not saying I'm not a you know, not labeling yourself and saying I photograph the sea, which I do over and over and over again. But I also think there's a place for doing other little things as well, and projects, and you can get kind of like engrossed in them and then start to enjoy them. And but with the wildflowers it's, I realized it's going to take me more than a year, it's going to take me over two or three years, because it's not that I'm not very good at it, it's hard, isn't it.
Speaker 2:It's very hard. It's very, I find it. I find it very hard and I didn't spend an awful lot of time doing it because I wasn't on my own, but it is hard. I think Harris just has everything for me. It has mountains, it has sea, it has flowers. For me, that's perfection.
Speaker 1:When you get to. So when you get to a load of wildflowers and you look at them and they're like it's kind of messy, isn't it? You sort of think, are we going to photograph the flowers close up so you just isolate them, or are we going to try and get the landscape, and it's all these choices isn't there? So, and I saw some of your images that came back. You were photographed at the same sort of times me and your images and I kept looking at them, going oh, elizabeth's images are really good.
Speaker 2:Well, I used my phone. The ones you've seen were actually on my iPhone because I really I took a few on my big camera but I usually don't carry a tripod with me, so I was still struggling a little bit with some of the technical stuff on the big camera. So I quite often take what I would call the still photograph with my iPhone and then we'll do the more creative things with my big camera. So the ones that you might have seen that were still images were taken on my phone, because I can't get the depth.
Speaker 2:I haven't really quite worked out all the sort of focal length at all. I think it's the focal length about getting the mountains and the flowers, when the flowers are very close to you and where, exactly where to focus and what have stopped, and I think I know, but I just haven't had the patience and the time to play with it. But it's difficult. So I tended to play with doing more the sort of abstracty things I'm thinking about. You're thinking about Harris and weaving and then using the abstract photos to weave the colours, and so I would sort of think that those were my sort of thought processes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was the ICM images that I really liked, okay, okay, I thought they were beautiful ICM. I think when it's done well, it can be stunning, and your, your photography, your ICM photography is so, yeah, those are the ones that I really picked off, okay, and I thought, oh, maybe I should do some ICM photos. So you've been influencing me Good. It's nice to open up, isn't it, and to try new things, and I think with.
Speaker 1:ICM. That's the point, isn't it? I think it suits you so well. But because you've already got the knowledge and the base of understanding about what it is you're trying to achieve and how it works for you and it's all there for you, you've got that layer of understanding start with, and then you can just go out and be free and to play, and ICM allows you to do that. It's very playful, isn't it Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I started wondering whether I'm a bit of a frustrated painter, because they're very painterly and I think, oh, it would just be lovely to be able to paint that, but I can't. I think I know you're doing a lot of oil painting and I'm starting to play a bit with watercolour. So we'll see. Because, again, watercolour, I thought watercolour because you can. You can sort of do it anywhere, just with your little pads. You just get it out and you can do it for five or ten minutes. It's not a big set up job with a, an example, and so yeah, so I'll see where that takes me.
Speaker 1:That's an interesting thing actually. I was talking to somebody about this I can't remember who it was actually, I think it was Bill Ward actually about ICM and we're talking and, as I'm saying, I wonder if the people that are leaning towards ICM are very much, in their personalities, leaning towards paints painterly. So it's a painterly effect, isn't it? So then the question is are we actually looking to to paint, right? I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I'm just I'm just throwing it out there and although I I suppose my images are painterly, I don't do ICM, but I did in a different way with the long exposure, so they're kind of painterly, they are very much so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and definitely it was always in my. I always knew that I'd get back to painting at some point, but I've seen some of your painting and actually it. It was really nice. If you don't mind me pulling up something that you'd said about following trying to follow a reel on Instagram about how to paint. I just thought it was such a wonderful, wonderful observation. It's so true, isn't it? Because, like, when we're starting something new, we're like how do we do this? But this is the same for everything, isn't it? That's the same for everything. We're learning something new, so we go right, okay, let's look at everyone else, and this is natural. I think that this is. There's nothing wrong with it. You need to look around at other people and learn, and learn, and learn until you get to the point where you can stop looking at other things and do your own thing, and that's when it comes.
Speaker 2:Exactly because I watched these little wheels and I think, okay, you put the pale colour first, or I didn't realise that, right, okay, so pale colour first, so you can actually pick up a lot just, and that's a nice little. You're going back to the sort of grabbing little bits of creativity. That's again a nice little thing. Okay, well, I'll just go and paint that flower I sewed and I saved them in my save bit on Instagram and so then I just pick it up and then I just spend 15 minutes just doing it. It's just fun.
Speaker 2:So I think I'm sort of coming a bit back full circle to the journaling sketchbooking when I'm traveling. It was photography which I would then make into a photo box book and make a video, and I would more like to diary. And now what I want to try and do is put it all in a book and it's like a sketchbook. So I want to do little vignette drawings. I've got a little printer so I can print some photographs, stick them in a little bit of writing. So that's sort of going full circle back to the journaling I was doing on holiday, but it's just expanded.
Speaker 1:That's seriously interesting that, because I think we do come full circle eventually and it might take years and years, and years and it might be just the right time frame. It doesn't mean that anything you've done on that journey is wrong. It's just been your path and you almost have to do that to get back to the root of it. Almost. Find that really interesting, because that's what's happened to me. It's been like a let me count the years 30 year journey back to where I started. It feels great, it feels absolutely great. It feels like oh right, okay, I've kind of I'm getting back home. I'm getting back home to what it was at the beginning, and what it was at the beginning was what I was doing then. Is I'm going back to that now? So I wonder if that's the same thing for you. Maybe it's not been 30 years for you, I was not taking you as long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you've had children in the midst so you've had a big other commitment, so you've got more time now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an 18 year sort of gap, isn't it in your life? Bring up children, exactly. So maybe it is, maybe that's what it is, yeah. So there was a massive gap in that, yeah, in that period. But it's lovely to see you and I loved your sketchbooks that you showed me. I think it's just great and I wish you could sort of give some visuals on that, elizabeth, because they're just so beautiful. But I think if you're feeling that, you're feeling that's the way to go, you're feeling that the painting is the way to go, and maybe it's, the images that you took will be the reference for the paintings in the future, and the writing and the words who knows?
Speaker 1:Who knows? Yeah, and the point behind all of this is that it brings you happiness. You lose yourself a little bit in it and it improves your wellbeing Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So thank you, margaret, because you've been a very big part of this. Thank you. I'm gonna do a bit of a plug for Margaret and Creative Haven. I thoroughly recommend it and the Creative Light Festival.
Speaker 1:Oh that's. It's been a pleasure and I do think the festival is particular Well, the membership as well. It's a more of a gentle, ongoing push. Every I'm there for people on a long term basis if they want me there. But the festival is such a great way of having to dip in, of other people's thoughts and ideas and to be around. I think being around, I think community, and in fact, with both of them, I think community is really important. And I talk a lot about introversion and being alone. That's completely separate. People always queer me on that. It's always saying that you wanna be alone all the time. You wanna create a loan. It's like, no, yes, I do, but community is where it is Community with the right people that support you and encourage you and make you feel inspired. I think that's at the heart of it. I think that's, and then you can go off and do your solo thing and I think without that I think I'd have struggled as well.
Speaker 2:All the things that I have followed, most of them have come out of Creative Haven. Hearing someone mention this, oh, I'll have a look. Hearing someone mention this, creative Light. That's why I've found it very valuable, because there've just been lots of little seeds planted. And then Creative Light, the old expression of finding your tribe, a whole group of people who wouldn't necessarily be people you would get together with in other circumstances. But when you have something in common that just sort of breaks down everything and you just get on, and that's what was really lovely about it, really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that happened definitely last year and this year it was gonna happen in the same way. You can just see it, you can feel it, and I'm just planning the next two years ahead, actually, as we speak. So I've got some interesting plans ahead. That's it Fantastic. So I will leave it at that. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's just lovely, lovely to hear your story. Thank you, Thanks. Keep on going you.