These experiences, of landscape, water, and dark stone stayed with me throughout art school where I happened across a lesser known graphite drawing by Andy Goldsworthy. It used the material itself as the subject, a circular graphite form on a rectangle of graphite. It shimmered like wet slate and pointed the way to my current practice.
Consequently, I am bewitched by graphite. Like diamond it’s an extremely pure form of carbon, and, in turn, carbon forms the building block of life itself. Not only is this material as ancient as life, but its superconductivity and atomic structure makes graphene, derived from graphite, technologically cutting edge.
Anchored in the past, essential to the future, as pure as diamond and soft as soap, the base material of life itself, I have used the black silver and grey of this wonder material to embed marks like secrets within its depths, whispered propositions for the observant to detect, and concealed shimmering and illusive drawings locked in its layers, quietly held for intimate discovery like a fossil or a fleck of fool’s gold.
And now I come to the drawings of these magnificent trees.