I never set out to create a language that would be my own. It took shape as I drew.
Certain shapes kept reappearing. Certain colours, too.
Gestures were repeated,
shifted, transformed. Little by little, something
became recognisable.
I rediscovered colours just as I rediscovered
an identity that had long been stifled.
Raspberry brightens the plum.
Light pink echoes the raspberry.
Each colour silently transforms
the presence of the others.
Form gives rise to background.
These relationships recur from one drawing to the next. I
do not reproduce them. I recognise them. They
now belong to a way of
drawing that has developed alongside me.
I play Mozart’s Symphony No. 25,
again and again.
The music returns with the regularity
of a heartbeat.
Its repetition does not confine me.
It opens up a space where my hand gradually finds its own rhythm.
This rhythm, too, becomes recognisable. A way of placing a dot, of bringing two colours together, of letting one shape give rise to another. None of these elements alone is sufficient to define an identity. It is the way they come together that ultimately creates a sense of coherence.
I approach drawing as some people approach prayer.
I seek there a circle.
define an identity. It is the way they come together
that ultimately creates coherence.
I approach drawing as some people approach
prayer.
In it, I seek the roundness and gentleness that the
world never guarantees.
Dots become bubbles.
The bubbles become a form of writing.
My hand never stops.
The shapes gradually take on a sense of familiarity.
I recognise them without needing to name them.
They belong to no system decided upon in advance. They become a language as they pass through the drawings, transform and encounter other shapes.
It is not catching up on lost time.
It is rediscovering a territory it had never completely left.
This territory remains in flux. Every new drawing alters it. A colour appears,
a shape transforms, a rhythm takes hold.
My graphic identity is forged in the
continuity of these transformations.
My drawings on these small pieces of
paper have become refuges.
My symbolic alphabets are
talismans of survival.
They carry a story without needing to
tell it.
I can look at an old drawing and recognise
what continues in today’s drawings. The
shapes have changed. The colours have
shifted. The brushwork has become richer. Something
runs through it all and allows me to recognise
what belongs to me.
My entire existence has slowly
settled into these coloured materials.
My desire to live still resides there.
The drawing becomes identity as a sense of
continuity emerges through its transformations.
Each sheet receives what existed before it,
shifts it and adds something to it.
I change with my drawings. My drawings
change with me. It is in this movement
that I recognise myself.
