Working with the primary materials of paper and charcoal in recent years, my work developed into becoming more surface than image. The drawing plane becomes a site where experience/information is processed and actions are registered. Eroding the materiality of paper with actions such as layering, scraping, tearing, cutting and sanding, a breaking open takes place.

The intimate process of breaking open is a physical one; sometimes demanding and messy, even a struggle – becoming one of uncertainty and tension. Through finding and making marks that are grounded in personal experience and have symbolic meaning, I come to see and know retrospectively. In this way a deeper understanding is gained of the materials chosen and processes emerging.

The same is true for the emergence of text and it’s interface with the materiality of the work. Words itself become a playing-field – structure/meaning and interpretation both requiring a certain mark, and informing the development of the mark.

Contributing texture; fragmented, broken, straw-like, scratchy and scrawled text, revealing and concealing, becomes evidence of my struggle to find text.