Meditations

Hours become days; it’s been months – nearly a year – with an empty diary. All the freneticism of a wonderfully social and hectic life had to be rechanneled into an interior world. 

Retracting a muscle all the way back into a deeply creative soul, in order to cope with the long stretch of time.

Drawing became a form of meditation. The intensity of the mark-making – its the energy that is inside – coursing its way on to paper. The pen finding its own metre, its rhythm; no longer dancing to the beat of organised time.

This is automatic drawing and these are fleshy, internal and cranial forms. Or perhaps they are the contours of terrain … an aerial view of places that still want to be visited….

These biro drawings were created over the course of four months during the winter lockdown of 2020/21. In my life, I have never had so much unplanned time and that’s with an ongoing full time job! What is fascinating to me, is that this scarred aesthetic naturally emerged in the Portraits that I drew 20 years ago. This time, I just let the automatic drawing take over, rather than trying to be too figurative. As the title of this collection implies, it is meditation. I’m finding it incredibly soul-soothing to channel my energy into an unthinking creative process. To better explain that: I generally have to plan, conceptualise and use a combination of processes if I am illustrating, writing or doing graphic design work. The Meditations are an oceanic feeling; to get Freudian! I can wade into a few hours of peaceful reflection – where I let the tide of the drawing wash all the cack out of my head – and take it out to sea.

To give context to any readers from the future, we are staying at home to control the spread of Coronavirus. This is my coping mechanism while I’m isolated.

**April 2021 update: I am delighted to have these Meditations featured as part of the latest online exhibition by The Lonely Arts Club. Visit The Lonely Arts Club to view ‘Marking Time’.