New work in stone & A Portugal residency
I spent new years day in 2025 writing a very long list of questions about my path forward, both creatively and personally, seeking direction and answers for the year ahead.
I don’t ever want to fall into a pattern of unconscious “doing” and lose sight of what is actually being asked of me.
That night I had an incredible and very direct dream, this is not uncommon for me and I am often guided in this way. In this dream I was shown very clearly to centre my focus on being home with my children and that I would be given new work to do, some of this was work I was already guided to do in previous dreams, but had been to busy to follow through on.I have been doing this work too and will share this all soon.
So, it is now May, and I have left home only a handful of times and when necessary and have been having new ideas coming to be at a volume that has been hard to keep up with. I have spent a lot of time with my children, in my garden and dealing with admin and other necessary tasks I had put off in busier times and I can see clearly now why I have needed this time at home.
The biggest pivot has been bringing stone into my practice. And this has come about in a way that feels so serendipitous, always a sign I am on the right path.
For as long as I can remember, stone has been in my periphery. As a child, while my family spent whole days fishing, something I had zero patience for, I would wander the banks assembling stones into structures. These are places in my memory that have always held a great fondness. Long before I knew the meaning of the word emphemeral I was creating in that realm. I remember being fully absorbed in my own mind and in the doing with the hands, unhurried and content, these are still my favorite days and way of being. I was accessing a mediative state long before I knew the meaning of that word either. It is why I continue to support my own children best I can in the act of “boredom” and free play.
So it seems it has taken thirty years of practice to return to stone, and I have a much to say and share via it as a medium.
I have felt an increasing awareness and desire to connect my work more deeply to the natural world that I am surrounded by. Questions of belonging have always circled in my mind, this has deepened as time passes and with the loss of important family members.
How we carry our origins, how we live, do and make, in what way are we grounded to a place. Essentially like many Australians, I am a stranger here, my blood is Celtic, English, Scandi and I am here via choices not made by me. I am also ever aware that this land where I live belongs first to people my ancestors displaced by their being here.
Stone is a natural progression in my curiosity around these questions. It already ties in so tangibly with my concept of POETRY BURIED IN GEOMETRY. I have made works from stone at different levels over the years, but never quite taken it seriously. Stone I realise is a geometry I can bring alive with “poetry, with the symbols and metaphor my work has become so rich with. It is a material I can find at my feet. I can source locally. It is of the earth in the purest of ways.
And then I discovered something that made it all feel even more significant.
In my research on the history of the use of stone for both aesthetic and spiritual reasons, I discovered that my maiden name Mellor, means ‘bare hill’. It is the name of a village in Lancashire, England, with three ancient quarries. Where my father’s matriarchal line comes from. So, stone has actually been significant in my family for generations before me. It seems then the attraction I feel to it, the joy of working with it, the affinity makes so much sense. It feels cellular. Sounds crazy I know, but the science is beginning to catch up with our understanding of these things and what our body can known sense that our mind cannot.
Stone is the oldest material human hands have reached for, to mark, to remember, to build shelter and sanctuary, to say we were here. Every megalithic site, every carved monument, every cairn on a hillside is an act of memory made permanent. Stone holds energy, not just as metaphor, but as a concept humans have understood since the beginning of time. It is used for ancient art, structures, for its strength, its beauty and its timelessness. The significance of stone as both marker and monument is something I keep returning to. At some point I want to visit in Mellor in person, also the sacred stone sites of England, Ireland, and Scotland, I feel there will be something important in that journey.
I lived in the Northern Territory for a large part of my early life and in my twenties, not long before I left I was given a gift by the late Lorna Napurrula Fencer, a significant Australian Aboriginal artist who I often spent time with. She was painting one day but stopped, found a stone, painted it, and gave it to me. I very much appreciated it at the at the time, but over the years it has gathered significance. As it has never been far from me, it was in my car for years, has sat on my studio desk, moved with me through my life. It was only recently that I realised how ever present it has been and how it quietly connected me to a life now very different to the one I am living now. That it was something of a talisman.
I have painted and gifted stones myself over the years. All of it feeling like it is coming to a fuller circle of understanding.
So after months of behind the scenes experimentation I am happy to say that I have my first large scale commission. A piece of 1.8 metre high stone arrives at my studio tomorrow.
I have also been invited to attend a residency at Calipo in Portugal and be part of a group exhibition in Lisbon. In Portugal I will have the opportunity to work with a mentor in both marble and other types of stone. I am so grateful for both of these opportunities and look forward to sharing the outcomes.
To fund the trip to Portugal, it is soon, this JULY, and I have spent much of this year investing in experimentation, I am going to make some maquette style works in stone available here in the coming days and weeks. These will be unique and personal pieces and can be your own gifts and talismans, reminders to ground, of the timeless nature of being human, and of our universal connection to both earth and nature itself. You will also be investing in helping me get to Portugal and in my practice, and the expansion of my understanding and my skill sets. Thank you to all of you who already do this in your way.
I am of course always open to other ways of being supported.. ie.. anyone want to trade a painting for Qantas points! Trade has always been apart of the creative economy! I have found it takes as much creativity to create a life you can create with, as it does to create! It is why I am still here doing what I do. I also have a stockroom catalogue available, please get in touch here if you would like to take a look.
If you are curious about my day to day, feel free to follow me on socials for more #bts and timely content!
Much love and thank you for being part of my journey..
Jasmine X
— Jasmine Mansbridge, May 2026
