Walking and Mapping
Walking wild spaces constitutes the main part of my contextual artistic practice. The act of walking is a way of finding close connection with the natural world, while allowing deep mapping of the environment. Recording this process through photography and drawing, in close and slow observation, connects me to a deeper sense of the wild landscape.
I am aware that while walking I create a pathway, or follow an existing one, reaching back in time to our most primitive selves before we had disconnected so radically from the wilderness we emerged from. Path forming using the body, as a way of creating a line, speaks to the most simple and ancient of human and animal mark making, A momentary imprint of human identity, belonging and connection to the past, present and future: as a path may have existed before, we walk it now, but it always leads somewhere we may not have been before.
This means of movement also brings the whole body into connection with the contours of the land and a deeper understanding of its materiality. My recording of the land is used to create prints, drawings, free stitch collages and grids. This echoes contours of the land and forest, which also inspire simple geometric forms in clay over which a series of track- like organic marks flow.
I walk to enter a greater flow state of consciousness so that I am more present to the natural world, that for a moment the language of the wilder places may be listened to, if not understood, and respected.
