Hildegarda (a familiar place I don't know), 2023

Charcoal, pastel, pencil and coffee on paper, 28x38

Series of 18

The wash of one’s complex relationships with body, family, land, religion and spirit plus the year’s extras - pandemic, fires and floods, etc – is fuel for drawing at night. It all percolates continually and my mission is to filter it into swirling hybrid environments; meltdowns of landscape, architecture, the body and something in between. Whether the drawings tilt towards the dystopian or utopian, a path out or a tunnel in, it’s often hard to tell. I begin not knowing what will emerge. I set up a mess then sift, edit and add in cycles until something unanticipated and curious begins to appear, then I run with it. I revel in this not knowing and cling onto the familiarity of the process, the absolute desperation and rightness in dragging charcoal across paper and the exhilaration of jumping into an immersive dark well. The well is usually full, from the wash of the days, the weeks and the years.

*full series yet to be uploaded.

Hildegarda (sifting the debris) 2023

Charcoal, pastel, coffee on paper; 15x41cm

Series of 30

*full series yet yet to be uploaded