ARTISTS TALKING

“The little girl threw down the comb and it grew bigger and bigger, and its teeth sprouted up into a thick forest, thicker than this forest where we live – so thick that not even Baba Yaga could force her way through. And Baba Yaga, gnashing her teeth and screaming with rage and disappointment, turned round and drove away home to her little hut on hens’ legs.” (‘Baba Yaga’ from Old Peter’s Russian Tales by Arthur Ransome)

Chapter two. Don’t stray from the path.
A camping holiday in Dorset was not a good choice for a city girl like me. I like to be surrounded by houses and people. Each long night I lay wide awake in my tent imagining there was a yeti skulking around outside. He was a great big hairy beast with claws. As sleep deprivation got worse so my imagination became more vivid. Yes, I could definitely see his shadow, and hear the sound of huge hairy feet close by.

Chapter Three. Is this a yeti leg... or just a paw hoax.
“Complete with furry padded paw, the well-preserved leg was found more than two miles up a remote mountain range... They could not identify which animal it came from but did not rule out the possibility it belonged to the yeti – a half-man, half-ape beast best known as the abominable snowman or bigfoot.”
Metro, Friday Oct 10 2003, Georgina Littlejohn

Chapter four. Wake up they’re growing!
Back home, I’m watching a dog running around with a man’s head on it – Invasion of the Body Snatchers is on TV. (It’s the Donald Sutherland remake... although the original is great too.) I start to list every horror film I’ve ever seen (which isn’t many. I am a true scaredycat... most of them I know from friends’ descriptions).
Late one night I actually manage to watch Halloween for the first time all the way through – a murderer has a sheet over his head and is pretending to be a ghost.

Chapter seven. Carry on Screaming.
I start to draw. The hairy beast/monster that has lived in my imagination since my Doctor Who watching days appears. Just claws and feet. I wonder if it has a tail. Then huts where witches live deep in the woods. I decide to burn them down. The drawings become animations.

Chapter Eight. Oddbod or An incident involving drawing on the walls of your living room with the idea that you will have an exhibition.
I have a family of birds living in the wall of my flat by the boiler flue. Two gentlemen from the council turn up to have a look. It is early morning, the room is empty except for the pencil drawings. I start to try to explain myself a bit wildly – they haven’t asked me to. They seem to like the drawings. “That’s It from The Addams Family isn’t it?”

Chapter nine. Darkness descends.
Now drawings cover the walls of my living room and furry claws come through the door. Twigs lie on the floor ready to make a camp fire, only they’re made of parcel tape. Where the fireplace should be, an animated wooden house burns to blackness reappearing only to incinerate again. The hallway is covered with yeti foot wallpaper. The things that live out in the wild have begun to encroach on my life in the city.

Rachel Cattle lives and works in London. She collaborates on animations with Steve Richards. ‘The Darkness’ took place in her London flat. Recent group exhibitions include the ‘Keith Talent Annual’, Keith Talent Gallery, ‘The Housewarming’ at The Residence and 4th Hull International Short Film Festival.
For a chance to wina copy of her comic ‘The Darkness’, along with a selection of artists’ books and ’zines, go to the subscriber prize.
www.rachelcattle.co.uk rachelcatgirl@btopenworld.com

UPDATE 2006
‘Don’t Stray From The Path’ (or what happened in a year)
It began last autumn. It had been a difficult year and the nights were drawing in. I needed something to take my mind off things and had been given a guitar. An early Christmas present. But I decided to make 100 drawings.They took longer than expected. Christmas came and went, my birthday came and went. Mostly done at night they were often an outpouring of how I felt. Lines and subject matter getting lighter or darker, a diverse collection of objects and imagined landscapes. By spring I wanted to get them finished, to move on. But I was only at seventy-five and they had to be 100. So I struggled to make the last twenty-five. They are probably the best. By day, I collaborated on what had started out as a conversation about the bits remembered from favourite films. These became ‘The Cardboard Films’ and a new comic book, Don’t Stray From The Path, which were exhibited in May in ‘Paperworld’ at the Transition Gallery and in June in ‘Publish and be damned’.
I took the newly finished 100 drawings to The Centre For Recent Drawing and am now working towards a solo show there in Feb. 07. I am also working on a film project for a show at Transition at the end of 07. I can still only play ‘By the time I Get To Phoenix’. Badly.