My work is all produced on paper. The paper is joined and then built up in layers to create large scale works. They are predominantly drawings and marks are produced in a number of ways, through painting, drawing, collage and abrasion. The works have a sense of history; the history that occurs through the making of the work. I have always liked the idea of re-working elements within the pieces, sometimes retaining a figurative element and sometimes wiping it out with gesso; ready to be drawn over. There is a feeling of palimpsest through this process. All the visual information is held in this papery surface, some will remain hidden but through this process of excavation, through a sort of strata, the work slowly reveals itself.
‘…..I just happen to like the look of the surface that’s been erased and left. It’s… like strata. I think it enriches the surface and ultimately, if the drawing works at all, it will make a richer drawing to look at. It’s about the history of the drawing. I like to leave the history in’. 1
Drawing Out – An excavation through drawing
I chose to title this series of work ‘Drawing Out – An excavation through drawing’ because the works are all about surface; the covering and uncovering of information; what is hidden and what is revealed – A memory trace. The process is one of order and disorder, working with contingency to try and make sense of the chaos that pervades life. Although the works are mixed media and there is a painted element within the work, they are predominantly drawings. I have always been excited by the act of drawing; the drag of a stone across a pavement when I was a child made me realise how fundamental it was for me to make my own mark; it gave me a language. Much later in my life I attended a lecture by Professor Anita Taylor (Director of the Jerwood Drawing Prize) and she made me realise that a drawing could be almost anything worked upon a surface. I like the idea and sensation of working and struggling with a surface which is taking my marks, and if these marks work well they stay if not they will fade through sanding or being scrubbed out by gesso before they can be re-worked. Areas of the surface can even disappear completely, revealing another layer through this new aperture. There is an evanescent element to the work, where anything might just fade away. This leaves only the tracks of time; the strata of the work.
Jim Dine liked ‘….leaving the pentimento of destruction. I love the pentimento, I love the memory, I love the tracks’. 2
This is an idea that has fuelled my work for sometime and I have sought to find inspiration and insight in a number of artists’ like Cy Twombly, Francesco Clemente, Lucio Fontana and Jacques Villegle. It might be that they have worked on paper; it might be for the drawn or painted element; it might be that the scale is exciting. There also might be some destruction in the work; within the surface of the work. Each of these artists' offers me something.