Drawing the Parts Together

When we ‘know’ that the world is interconnected, that no one part can be detached from another, and yet our language and culture keeps telling us otherwise, what are the ways that we can create models of interbeing, reminders of the underlying reality?

My artwork has tended to combine different materials and processes together to reveal the interconnectedness beneath the surface. Collage, layered sound and video, woven structures, multiple exposure photographs, all ways of taking the parts and bringing them back together again perceptually.

Recently I’ve enjoyed using drawing as a simple way to connect elements of my life together that might otherwise seem separate. Bodies and rivers for example.

This morning (at breakfast time – this seems the best time for an uninterrupted period of making during lockdown, before the home schooling begins) I took some of these drawings on to the next stage, using multiple exposure photographs to layer them with the fleshy, hairy real-ness of my own body. There’s something ‘right’ and satisfying for me, when I can draw the parts together in a piece of artwork, and create something that speaks of the interconnected reality that sits beneath it all.