Drawings made in France, 2019
Wall at St Hilaire Abbey in the Luberon.
I made these drawings last summer in France with my parents. They said it would be their last trip. I drew on egg boxes and bits of packaging, paper bags and card. I enjoyed the provisional nature of the drawings and propping them up at the end of the day. I made a large series of prints at Slaughterhaus ‘The Tears of things’ from these drawings. They are all mono prints. I was drawn to Etching and printmaking because I love the embedding of marks in a surface. I have always loved the soft chalky pink walls of Saint Hilaire abbey, a Carmelite monastery in the Luberon. I have sat for many hours drawing in the cool interior of the simple space. I have returned to its spaciousness and mesmerising beauty in different ways.
I’m reading a book by Tim Ingolds called ‘Lines’. He is looking at lines, writing and music through an anthropological lens. He is articulating what I have always felt my work is about. Drawing, image, mark making well they are like sounds to me, notations, inscriptions, utterances. This series turned out all watery and I enjoyed the bleeding of the materials into the thin Japanese paper alongside smashing the stabilo pencil into the surface. Pushing the paper through the press is a tremendously forceful process but yet you can make something feel transient and light.
Monoprint on thin Japanese paper,