Possible Landscapes

A series of drawings exploring the idea of speculative worlds created through the physical and embodied process of mark making.

I begin these works by loosely scribbling in response to my immediate surroundings, things I see, things I hear and things I feel – Immediate embodied reactions to the textural qualities of my environment, translated into marks, shapes and lines.

I made this series at my studio in Bow, East London. It’s an open plan studio where you can hear the occasional comings and goings of the other artists in the building. I hear brushes being washed in the sink, the ping of the microwave as people heat up their lunch in the kitchen area, the toilet doors clacking as they close, the hum of the extractor fan and snippets of overheard conversations. My drawings embody the rhythms of those happenings via the shapes, lines and forms that emerge in the drawing.

I work quickly in pencil, unlike with paint, which requires more steps. The immediate trace of the pencil makes the compositions form and change more rapidly. I scatter my attention around the paper, intuitively changing colours and making marks in response to what is happening around me at the time. As structures become apparent, I focus my attention on the world inside the drawing, overlaying and re-structuring as I go. I apply dense layers of pencil on pencil, marker on pencil, and pencil on marker to create a palimpsest of overlapping spaces in rich otherworldly fields of colour.

The process is dense and physical. I work on 425 gsm hotpressed cotton watercolour paper, which has plenty of room for manipulation. It feels like a skin, that I am etching or imprinting the marks into as if it were a tattoo. This skin receives not just the imagery that I envisage and attune to, but the physical force of my body – an embodiment of my imagination. I scratch the surface and push hard with the coloured pencils, digging deep into the structure of the paper.

Each drawing is an unfolding story. Rhythms, patterns and textures transform into bodies and beings intertwined with architectural forms which seem to defy logic and physics. Floating rooms morph into organic forms entangled within an improbable geography, overlooked by watchful custodians of the space.

For me, the drawing is a process of discovery – the creation of a possible landscape that becomes apparent through the process of drawing it. For viewers it is invitation to explore. What is the scale of this map? Are we looking in or looking on? Who is here, and what is happening here? What do you want it to be?