The work is to aesthetically engage with nature and the Self and transcend the constructed views of both. It begins with a step into nature with a line of enquiry. Through observation and interpretation questions are walked with and responses recorded in drawing, writing, audio, film and photography.
Walking is a way into a work, and it is of the work. Whether walking lines of steps through a forest, or walking charcoal across a page, each step is accompanied with a process of intuitive analysis, making connections between the enquiry and what is encountered. With each step forward, something is let go of, released, it feels like coming home.
All walks are interrupted with a pause, just like breathing, and it is in the pause that something new is accessed either in the the view of the physical world, the senses that experience it, or the energy or expansion that is felt. I take these experiences into the material process of making work, pausing lines in drawings, or using energies in the application of the paint to make intuitive, abstract work.
The process allows for unconscious or intangible influences to appear. The work often has a dreamlike quality, presenting glimpses of the familiar in new forms. The process of making the work is as much of an enquiry as the walk itself.
There is a performative element too, in the acts of walking, acts of noticing and acts of mark-making, which I bring into the process of making the work.
The process can be of isolation in order to see without distraction, but sometimes it is about facilitating experiences for others to engage with their own enquiry. See The Art of Enquiry.