Drawing Correspondence was founded in January 2021 by artists/educators Chloe Briggs, Tania Kovats and Anita Taylor as a response and contribution to a growing engagement with and sharing of drawing practice online. It is a structure that takes many forms and is designed to support participants at any stage of their practice in and through drawing. It is a way of forging connections and expanding a drawing community beyond institutions and physical space.
Many thanks to: Jo Lewis, Angela Maddock and Carali McCall
Christine Checinska
Sarah Grace Dye
Charlie Ford
Lyndsay Humphries
Becky Little
Elaine Thompson
Rose Montgomery-Whicher
Paul Wakelam
Karen Wicks
With a letter from:
Chloe Briggs
Tania Kovats
Anita Taylor
1. Elaine Thompson
2. Becky Little
3. Rose Montgomery-Whicher
4. Paul Wakelam
5. Charlie Ford
6. Lyndsay Humphries
7. Christine Checinska
8. Sarah Grace Dye
9. Karen Wicks
Dear Restoration, Restorers,
Through drawing, we invited you to reflect on restoration and what it means to you. As your explorations grew, your understandings of restoration become expansive and deep – an ebbing, flowing enquiry between past, present and future.
The studio, and nature, provided a playground to examine feeling, form, subject and content; a framework for enquiry and a space to negotiate complexities and to form material equivalents to what is to be alive. From eyes to hands to minds, you have nurtured the connections of drawing. Making marks and lines, weaving your histories of looking and creating across time, surface, space and experience.
Iteratively marking, mending, unmaking, remaking, remending, re-establishing, remembering, re-telling his/her stories. Your eyes rested on paper, card, fabric, clay, earth, sand, resin; you observed the sea, sky, bushland, trees, flowers, gaps, fissures, wounds, sutures, and breakages. Scorched and sodden earth; burnt and brittle crumbling twigs of charcoal; silvery graphite; drying liquids; capaciously accepting paper - all played their part to deploy your nervous systems. You perceived their emotional register, fragilty and strength, with poignancy and purpose.
Each of you took things apart to find something new. As you located your innermost thoughts and actions through the act of drawing, mark-making enabled you to see what you were thinking, to seek and to find the unspoken, to reconnect, to restore, or to be restored.
Sand returns to rock, sight returns to sea, fine line[r]s held onto beginnings, resin melted to conjoin skin and land, a tree is personified, a daffodil bulb bursts into life, the lines provide scaffolding, a package of planes and notations contain choices, fractures traced with precision recomplete a sense of whole. Serendipitously, connections grew from thick tarry lines to threads of silk woven together like whispery cobwebs, temporary trails left in the sky by an aeroplane, or permanent scars
creased deep with time. Lines were performative, acted out in space and time to audience, and to self; sometimes as quietly domestic as the criss-crosses of stitches or the residue of cut marks scarring a chopping board. Shapes, tones, colours, images,and words made meaning, forming a synthesis of ideation, expression, and content.
Drawing became a net, made and mended, to catch something of value to each of us/you. Covered and uncovered, through the act of marking and erasure. Cut, scored, unravelled, stitched together or repaired, with each mark made you mended, returned and restored something to yourself.
Drawing is a fundamental means of noticing, helping us to create an empathetic feedback loop between us, our experiences, the ecologies we are part of. As we look around us there is so much damage in our troubled worlds; things broken, being broken, or not being taken care of. This noticing enables us to see, to form a proposition for healing, and permission and encouragement to re-imagine how we can mend our worlds, and ourselves.
You have clearly thrived together - the conversations, confidence, support and courage you given to each other. You have restored belief to start anew, revitalised, reinvigorated.
Thank you.
Tania, Chloe, Anita
CHRISTINE
tidalectic encounters, or ‘moving with ease’ ‘Tidalectics’ offers a way to speak about,and through oceanic subjectivities performatively, evoking the ebb and flow of the tides.
(Kamau Brathwaite)
tidalectic encounters, or ‘moving with ease’ christine checinska ‘Tidalectics’ offers a way to speak about, and through oceanic subjectivities performatively, evoking the ebb and flow of the tides. (Kamau Brathwaite)
‘The act of painting, the act of daring to make art, the Arawak had a word for it, and they called it Timehri... Now, Timehri to the Arawak means the mark of the hand of man...That is the word for art for me.’ (Aubrey Williams) Slow and easy timehri.
‘The act of painting, the act of daring to make art, the Arawak had a word for it, and they called it Timehri... Now, Timehri to the Arawak means the mark of the hand of man...That is the word for art for me.’ (Aubrey Williams) Slow and easy timehri.
journeying crossing intermingling interacting reflecting winding wining washing bathing baptising blessing and seaing me
SARAH
Another level of knowing Coloured pencil, biro and pastel on paper
63 x 49 cm
CHARLIE
Leave something behind to pick up the following day. Remain a perpetual foundation student. Rework discarded material. Entertain making something you don’t usually make. The drawing is always happening. Do first and think later. The work is way more intelligent than you are so let it reveal itself. Draw with a Fineliner because it makes you think of the beginning. You can you use your voice if you want to it’s alright. Get over yourself. Is the drawing equivalent to the feeling? Check in with the source. Shed the armour. Unlearn to go deeper. Find improbable ways of binding materials together. This is all quite dangerous. It can be simpler than you think. Are you open to receiving from the drawing? Write as you draw and speak as you mean. Starve yourself of time because you can actually do more with it. Take your time though. Frame and give permission to playtime. Being an artist is like being a long-distance athlete, be aware that some sprint. Think of practice as changing and evolving. What do you need to keep holding on to? Keep mining. Keep dancing. Disregard nothing. Accumulate. Think about the thing, but also think about the space around the thing. Become comfortable with the uncomfortable. You always have a choice to answer that question. Follow the joy. Zoom in and zoom out. The subject is in flux but your toolkit is familiar. What don’t you like and what is it trying to teach you? Withhold judgement. There are no rules. In some respects get on with it. Don’t be site-based and draw transiently. Drawing can be free or cheap. Drawing is always on its way somewhere. Draw the invisible. Keep speaking slowly with pauses and doubts. Be sensitive to your joints and the weather. Drawing doesn’t always feel reliable and neither does the body. Keep looking for that texture that doesn’t exist. Remember drawing with your mum as a kid. Drawing is visual evidence of your truth. Drawing is like a therapist reassuring you of the chaos. Drawing is a silent witness. Time is untraceable. What’s your story? How do you connect to the things that inspire you? It takes years of mulling to know what you want to draw. Keep turning up, it’s the least you can do. There is no one solution, the value is in the story. Draw more to make less. Believe in turning a corner. Accept false dawns. Poignancy is not in your hands. Practice any of the above - hopefully.
Fineliner pen on 160gsm paper
29.7 x 42cm
Reminders (above)
A collection of barely legible handwritten notes I’ve taken throughout the programme, typed into something useful. Made from the wisdom and generosity of the Drawing Correspondence team and my peers.
Untitled (left)
LYNDSAY
Birak/First Summer is the Noongar season of burning. Fires were lit when enough rainfall kept them low and controlled, the dry understorey carefully scorched to invite new growth. This year there is no rain. Tradition is lost: forests die and again there are wildfires.
I glean resin from local grass trees, and crush it to powder.
Heavy under 40-degree heat this I cast onto paper: an act of hope. Breath and body respond.
Held over a flame the image darkens, melts, fuses.
Skin, land and season conjoin.
Second Summer will be even hotter and drier.
We find solace in the waterways as we wait for the green to call us from the black.
Note
‘Noongar’ is the name of the Aboriginal people and language of Southwest Western Australia.
Birak / First Summer Xanthorrhoea Preissii resin on 210gsm paper 42 x 59.4cm
Sand extraction, the main ‘resource’ of our built environment, is leading to a crisis of habitat loss and destruction in the march to urbanise and subdue the natural world. By drawing with sand and a light touch, I seek to reconnect to an ancient and instinctive impulse to leave a mark - but one that disappears safely and softly into the ebb and flow of life. As for Restoration - what would the sand say?
Sand-lines (to draw the world in a grain of sand....)
Birsay shell sand from Orkney 150cm x 50cm
BECKY
Who speaks for sand?
I am sand, shape-shifter and land maker. Big rock becoming little rock— Soft and slippery or sharp and full of bite. Endlessly on the move with river and sea Or dispersed to the wind like seeds.
In this cycle of comings and goings
My reach is wide and deep. You may claim to own me but I will not be tied down— Not for long anyhow…..
When you are young, we play together with sticks and pebbles, Your bare feet mingling with my bare bones, As you shape and carve me into monuments and moments— A world of worlds where geography is small and hands are huge. And you write your names big and bold on my skin Before I melt into the undertow.
Soon, you begin to gather my colourful offerings in your pockets And take me home to the museum of tiny things, A microcosm of life gathering dust on a shelf, Among fossil and forest memories Where I dream of wilder times.
The older you get, the more you want— Mapping, digging, quarrying, crushing, Washing, sieving, casting, grinding. You manipulate me into submission and freeze me in time, Bound to your need for things to be hard and held, Consumed in the blink of an eye.
But I will not yield And I will break Because I am rock becoming— And I will return to where I began.
ELAINE
To My Drawing
I am present in front of you. In the studio I face you, you are the same size as me.
My arms, your limbs. I make marks, I erase and I make more marks Charcoal dust sheds and gathers beneath the drawing
I use my whole body To stretch to the corners of the paper I make marks, I erase and I make more marks.
The charcoal scratches and crackles I think of you as I carve your shape out of the dark. Jagged lines etch out the split and separated bark on your trunk, Curved marks form your lichen-furred, arched limbs. The process is all involving I make marks, I erase and I make more marks The line of velvety charcoal dust builds. Something begins to stir Across the surface of the paper
Remnant charcoal on paper
140 x 100cm
ROSE
Dear Reader,
Here are my instructions for restoring a drawing practice:
Find bulbs. These should be living, but languishing, and possibly dusty. They may be found hidden in sketchbooks, or a stash of paper, in piles of drawings, in corners of the imagination, dormant projects, and half formed ideas.
Place the bulbs in a suitable container for six weeks. Your container should have a solid structure, but also a large opening to allow plenty of light, water and warmth to seep in and circulate. This container should be kept away from public view, but in sight of those who know how such things grow. Protect them from excessive noise and distractions.
Add water. This will be in the form of drawing prompts, workshops,encouraging and challenging feedback, offered by three experienced gardeners. Some of what they offer will be unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. Don’t worry, just pour it on. You never know what will make your bulbs sprout.
Add warmth. This will emanate from the three gardeners and from fellow participants who understand the vulnerability of small growing things.
Add light. All of these same people will illuminate your sprouting bulbs with insight and ideas, and examples of their own.
Encourage growth. This may involve any or all of the following: playing, experimenting, building, mark-making,drawing slowly, drawing boldly, dripping, pouring, learning, reflecting, writing. And just as importantly: waiting, watching, listening, erasing, taking apart,ripping, cutting, unlearning. Above all, your bulbs will need your time and attention—returning, tending—day after day.
Be willing to be surprised: after 4 or 5 weeks, perhaps sooner, something fresh will appear. Growing from familiar ground, it may unfurl slowly, or it might burst forth all at once. Welcome it,watch it grow. This is just the beginning.
Three daffodil bulbs, eleven days
Graphite 26 x 58cm
PAUL
“All of my thoughts...” detail
Graphite and acrylic ink on Fabriano paper full work 60 x 30cm
‘Fortune Teller’ Mixed Media 24 x 24cm
CHRISTINE CHECINSKA
Artist, designer, curator, storyteller and explorer of all things creative. Her work sets fashion and textiles into the wider contexts of art and culture, exploring their relationship to race and gender. Her artist’s heart and artisan soul believes that living is the ultimate act of creativity. Who we are, how we live and what we leave behind are all creative choices. Sometimes we can use creativity to transform lives, communities and cultures. But sometimes, creativity itself compels us to create simply for the sheer joy of it.
christinechecinska.com
@checinskachristine + X @Dr CChecinska
Lyndsay studied fine art in Sydney, London and Perth and lives on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja (Walyalup/Fremantle, Western Australia). She works as an arts educator with a focus on social impact, dis/ability and mental health. Lyndsay is interested in how what she feels emotionally and sensorially makes a difference to what she draws, as well as how physical and psychological landscapes merge and are revealed through the act of drawing. Site responsive investigations into nature’s materials and processes are core.
@lalynds
Sarah is interested in everyday alchemy, finding a use and beauty in the ephemera from our daily rituals. It is important to waste nothing, that everything has a purpose and an inherent beauty to be examined, explored, elevated and a new purpose discovered. She has over thirty years of experience as a visual artist through teaching, making and curating, her primary aim has always been to encourage everyone to find creativity within themselves.
sarahgracedye.com
@sarah_grace_dye
Drawing is at the heart of Rose’s work as an artist, educator, and author. Working mostly from observation, she draws as a way of slowing and preserving fleeting moments of specific experience. She is the author of “The phenomenology of observation drawing: Reflections on an enduring practice” ( Routledge, 2022). She lives in Toronto with her husband, two young adult children, and a dog named Tapioca.
@rose.montgomery.whicher
Becky is an artist/builder career in conservation, archaeology. She of her creative ric that includes teaching and research. her experimental interact with the sponse to planetary downs, her practice and entities that and overlooked, tangled place in
@becky.rebearth rebearth.co.uk
Career began in ly completed an contrasts with tural drawing being charcoal, graphite fascinated with for much of Paul’s the physicality tionship to the an act of expressing shapes and lines noise in the mind,
@paulnwakelam paulwakelam.co.uk
SARAH GRACE DYE
LYNDSAY HUMPHRIES
BECKY LITTLE
ROSE MONTGOMERY-WHICHER
PAUL WAKELAM
artist/builder with a long conservation, architecture and She weaves the diverse threads life into a continuous fabincludes construction, sculpture, research. Drawing is part of experimental approach to understand and the physical world. In replanetary emergencies and breakpractice gives voice to materials that are threatened, exploited and embraces our porous enin the web of vibrant matter.
architecture, but he recentMA in Fine Art His artwork the precision of architecbeing based around the use of graphite and printmaking and is the handmade. The genesis Paul’s work has been walking; of walking creates a relalandscape. Drawings become expressing on paper the textures, lines that create background mind, memories of place.
Artist/printmaker/educator and gardener, inspired by the environment and cycles of nature. She studied Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art BA(Hons) and European Fine Art at Winchester School of Art Barcelona/Winchester. Drawing is at the core of her practice and gives her a sense of time and place from where other projects develop. She delivers printmaking workshops to schools/local organisations and from her garden studio.
Artist using experimental drawing and low-fi print techniques to explore our connection with abandoned and imagined landscapes; drawing as play
ghostbuildings.co.uk
@iacartroom
@ghostbuildings
Visual artist from Greater Manchester working across drawing, choreography and design. In the studio he maintains a rigorous drawing practice that strikes a balance between delicacy and precision, paying close attention to placement and arrangement and considering the drawing surface as a space for movement.
@charliejcford charlieford.studio
CHARLIE FORD
KAREN WICKS
ELAINE THOMPSON
Nine spheres - portraits in clay Becky Little
Published as an outcome of the Drawing Correspondence Program: RESTORATION
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without express permission of Drawing Correspondence and the artists.
