Uncertainty is at the heart of my practice. I plan as little as possible. I want to unearth, not realise. So – how to challenge that in a meaningful way? I have grown averse to drawing in my pursuit of direct sculpture. As part of the Certainty/Uncertainty module Elena suggested I approach drawing in a different way. She is right – drawing doesn’t have to be pre-sculptural or pencil line 2d render of a planned object. It can be  surprising and liberating. She gave me Land Art (sketched) (Cabinet) to read. The drawings are of memories of photographs of The Lightning Field earth sculpture discussed in the previous article Land Art (photographed). Without going into too much detail with respect to that article and project (which seemed to be about artistic control of viewer experience and the imposition of an Authentic Experience) it has fed into my practice in an entirely unexpected way. I have a large cellar underneath my house.  I cleared some space (working from the bottom up is what i am interested in – behavioural, non-cerebral, non-conceptual) found some oil pastels, some 90g/m2 tracing paper that i use for work and started to play. Its a natural dark room in fact I had some enlargers down therefor a while that i had intended using until I decided to have a clear out.

I start repeating single gestures, overlaying and using paper edge to impose internal boundaries, re-overlaying at angles and back lighting to create artificial landscapes in a dark basement. Im working in a darkroom but here the chemical solutions are physical and psychological – chemistry, physics and biology.

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