My recent work attempts to expand the dialogue between drawing and landscape. In relation to the landscape, charcoal and ink have primarily been used as tools of study, mimetic devices capable of quickly describing the features of a mountainous or oceanic scene. The graphic line can efficiently differentiate the coniferous from the deciduous or separate the horizon line from the shoreline, and historically have been the mediums that artists have used for these purposes.
I create landscape through process, using traditional mediums of charcoal and ink on paper. The features of simple forms are built from gesture, a slow a additive and reductive process. Layers of charcoal mimic layers of sediment. The quickness of the ink wash is negated by the erosive quality of the eraser, then built upon with charcoal in multiple layers until waves have ripples, mountains have peaks and hills have paths. Through the material I am trying to mimic the natural processes that create landscape. I don’t limit the drawings to our current topography but also landscape that suggest great distance from us in both space and time.
The imagery is used to further heighten the sense of abstraction. White geometric, vacuous forms invade the landscapes. I haven’t fully defined what these mean for the work, but currently they function as a from of interference to the drawn image. I believe that in part this interference functions to subvert the sublime qualities of the work. The white forms also lead the image into the narrative that I have been working with. In this narrative the images are being broadcast, through superluminal communication, from the future and are ever present around us, closely mirroring the way current telecommunications function.
The influences of the imagery range from comics and illustration to science fiction, astronomy, geology and ancient architecture.