About my drawings

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My drawings of light and shadow are grounded in the immediate, physical experience of nature. I build the drawing through time as I move through space. Making tracings of light and shadow in the outdoors, responding quickly in changing conditions to limit the cognitive and maximize the intuitive act of drawing. My drawings actualize accumulations of light and shadow as formative phenomena through the process of tracing by, for example, hiking trails or other locations and placing my drawing surface under foliage, making tracings of light and shadow that fall on the paper. These tracings along with erasure and rubbings become markers of time and place and carry visual evidence of both annual cycles and the immediate shifting of conditions in the moment. Other drawings are made by tracing parts of these previously made drawings onto layers of translucent vellum. These drawings contend with the vagaries of memory, time, and change. These traced drawings allude to the ‘original’, while becoming complete drawings unto themselves.

In these drawings I am interested in making images that evoke a sense of dimensional space and then confound that perception by underscoring the flatness of the drawing’s surface.  I start with drawings made from observation to achieve referential, pictorial space. Then undermine the readability of that space by enacting disruptive actions like tearing or cutting and reassembling the image repeatedly. I am interested in the resulting ‘place-ness’ and/or perceptual 'space' of the drawing that emerges as a result of this activity.  If a drawing carries a sense of space, I believe it has the capacity to arouse an association of place.  My drawings are tensioned between the poles of flat/deep, and someplace/anyplace.