Charcoal Drawings
Beginning with willow charcoal on paper felt like exploring a new world, and at the same time, it felt like a natural progression of my practice as an investigation into embodied intuition and the state of flow or no-mind where intuitive creation happens. It was only as a progression or a synthesis of life drawing and ink painting that I was able to begin drawing with charcoal in this non-representational and intuitive way.
An essay on contemporary drawing titled ‘Drawing the Dao’ (Flavel and Luzar 2019) prompted me to return to a basic tenet of my practice: getting out of the mind and into the body. It was Tony Orrico’s full-body drawings in graphite that immediately prompted me to start experimenting in this way, creating from the centre of the paper in the style of Pollock, to become one with the materials and the space, engaging in a physically connected state of flow. This new way of working transformed my practice from picture-making to expressive and embodied mark-making. I began drawing in the same way that a spider makes a web. Creating from within the paper, with my body in the centre, meant that I had no visual awareness of the overall composition. This developed my practice to become a more advanced experiment in trust, connection, and intuitive feeling.
(Aug 2025)
