Drawings

This drawing is one of a series of works in various media, made in response to researching the Cranborne Chase National Landscape. Win Green is one of the prominent hilltop beech groves so visible in this ancient landscape traversing the Dorset-Wiltshire border.

A meditation on particularities of the Dorset landscape. The name Sturgeaesthetica means ‘a sense of the Stour’ or ‘a feeling for the Stour’. It’s not a geophysically accurate view, but representative of an imagined, or felt, Stour landscape. Memories, from walking, cycling, loitering, map-reading, and a condensed understanding of natural history coalesce to form this perspective: features and spatial relationships resonate as being typical, recognisable and familiar. 

Surveillance: Down, Between, Up
2024
Drawings, graphite on paper
Triptych
Three panels, each 70 x 50 cm
70 x 160 cm total

SHORTLISTED FOR THE TRINITY BUOY WHARF DRAWING PRIZE 2024

I first encountered Durlston, Dorset on a coast path walk, skirting the land’s edge and feeling an abruptness to this jutting peninsula. The sense of divide between water and land is visceral.

I felt like a sentinel at this crossing point (the castle is pure theatre), a gathering stage for birds migrating between Africa and the northern Tundra. It’s hard for me to ignore its allegorical subtext, being the child of an immigrant. Humans are more mobile now than ever, and a different sense of watchfulness and guardianship is in the air.

I created this trio of drawings thinking about that and the kind of England that we’ve made.

This work was first shown in Convergence, a show by twenty3 art collective, at the Fine Foundation Gallery, Durlston Country Park, Swanage in April 2024. It is currently touring in the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2024 exhibition as a shortlisted work.

Sixteen Belsyre Rubbings
2024
Rubbings, graphite on paper
16 drawings, each 15 x 15 cm, mounted in a 4×4 grid
70 x 70 cm total

These drawings were made on-site at the former Belsyre Garage. This was once a SAAB dealer and service centre close to the heart of Oxford. It is now owned and managed by the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS).

For now, the buildings still harbour the essence of their commercial light-industrial use. Sixteen Belsyre Rubbings seeks to preserve some of that essence as a context for my work in the space.

This project was facilitated by the Arts University Bournemouth Drawing Research Group and supported by the Pitt-Rivers Museum and OCHS.

Bowl (Interwoven)
2022
Drawing, graphite, pencil, pastel, sewing thread on watercolour paper
36 x 48 cm

A drawing of a unique paper bowl, handmade by Dorset artist Fran Quinlan.

Caffeine
2023
Drawing, Indian ink, acrylic, cotton thread, graphite and coffee on paper
56.6 x 71.8 cm

From the uplands of Brazil to the coffee pot, Caffeine is a short story told in shadows and drips.