Drawings play an important part in my practice. Drawing is a way of thinking and creating, seeing what works, suggesting things that can be realized in other media (sound or performance, for example). By drawing something, I usually understand it better, or even why it cannot work as a drawing but must be made in another way. I enjoy studying historical examples of drawing and image-making which can then be related to present-day events and situations.
Large drawings
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/907421450 A beautiful response to the above drawing.
Lockdown drawings old masters
In 2020 I started drawing again as a way to connect with art and reflect on society during lockdown. I imagined historical art works in present-day conditions, mixing mask-wearing with the appearance of plague doctors in drawings based on works by Manet, Gainsborough, Bosch and Breughel, amongst others.
Lockdown drawings- the Italian Trip
I had arranged a visit to northern Italy in April 2020, planning to visit historic sites and museums in Bologna, Padua, Verona, Vicenza and Mantua. This obviously was impossible, so I started to make drawings of some of the works I had hoped to see there, adorned with masks. Giotto’s Caritas from his series of Vices and Virtues in the Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, seemed particularly pertinent, as community help and foodbanks stepped up activities to help people in lockdown who were isolated and hungry.
Drawing made for videos
I decided that I would experiment with using small drawings to make videos. (see video page of this website) . These were sometimes based on earlier work I had done in other media, performances that never happened, or applications I had made for projects that failed to gain funding. (“Others were preferred” said one Arts Council rejection letter). I decided this time was as good as any to turn them into art. All of these are small and done in various pencils, mostly HB, 2B, 4B, 6B,8B.
Some of the drawings I made for the videos can be seen here.
Drawings made to be part of a live performance
After experimenting with drawings and video-making, I decided I wanted to work on drawings which would be projected as part of a live performance and with which I would be in dialogue, responding to the questions, accusations, and statements in the drawings. The following were made for a new work For having been born Elsewhere which has not yet been performed with the projected drawings.
The native wren asks the exotic migrant hoopoe, “have you come here like that parasitic cuckoo to turf us out of our own nests? “