Wintering Well

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: Elisa Alaluusua, Matthew Avignone,Sarah Casey, Jo Lewis.

Jacqueline Amies Arpit Bhrgava Gillian Cooper Jane Greenstreet Mary Low Caroline Macdonald Leonie Siri MacMillan Kirsty Stevens

With a letter from: Chloe Briggs Tania Kovats Anita Taylor

A screenshot of participants sharing their drawings from a workshop of roots and branches.

Dear Winter,

Turns out you are a wonderful season to draw in to. We can only feel gratitude to how this season held our drawing together.

Wintering is a time to feel your way through, go out in the garden at night, listen, re-learn and re-map what you thought you knew under cold moons. To savour the early dusk and draw a face as the light dims. To walk out early, before the day starts, in all weathers to draw the bare boned skeletons of trees; or burrow into charcoal drawings of the nests that are made in them. A season of retreat and recovery where we reflect, make marks, and fold into our reserves.

We learnt from the cold, the archaeology of glaciers, polar travels, and ice cubes.

Wintering Well allowed for the following of a movement of the body in a brush stroke and recognising the winter of our lifelines mirrored in an ancient tree. We looked in the crevices where mushrooms fruit. We wormed in under the surface of things to the roots of the year where we could follow the magical mycelium networks and find equivalents in the sparking networks and shadows of the brain. We paid a visit to the temple in a city where pollution hangs thick in the air, and lungs, through winter.

All this moving us towards a better understanding of the intricate inky layers of entanglement between the human and the non-human.

Drawing can bear witness to this at any time but perhaps more than we could have imagined at this time of hibernation and darkness with its language of shadows and darkened tones.

Drawing as a way of preserving, bottling, salting our experience.

Wintering Well is quietly coming home to what we love, and to ourselves.

For nearly 20 years I have walked through you.

I have caressed, manicured and maintained you, Relaxed, entertained and laughed within you, Played games, photographed and drawn you.

I have eaten from you.

Recently I have let you run wild. You have become a natural place, Embraced an abundance of new life. Wild animals walk and frolic in you, Native flowers and long grasses dance in you. An endless stream of insects and pollinators pass through you.

In the last six weeks I have seen a new side of you.

By the light of the Beaver moon, I have been drawn to you.

I know you? I know you not. I am intrigued. What I know fades at dusk into darkness. My exploring time.

The night shadows change what I know.

I have been drawn deeper into your darkness.

I look, listen, slowly feel my way, Spending cold, dark hours within you. I smell and taste the cold until my fingers can take no more. You have changed. You are still changing.

Silent darkness has changed my feeling for you. Slowly, at dawn, the soft winter colours emerge.

I am drawn still deeper to you, I seek out the delicate entanglement of your being, The roots, fungi and mycelium.

By the Cold Moon I continue my layers of exploration.

Winter Well my Eden.

Babe (I did a scan and) we’re going to be okay

It’s the first winter when we’re not together. The air is bad and the visa is going to be a problem soon You’re in one place and I’m in another

Where will we live together? We can move underground babe I heard about the trees and how they take care of each other

Even when they’re far away And what will we do? What we always do, make something out of the things around us, Use time well

And dream of a better future

And when we get older there is no fear Because under the ground the more things wither the more things grow

We can move underground And never die

Winter

The starkness, darkness, stripped backness. Earthiness and deep velvety blackness with stark light; white, gold and silver leaf. The sounds, the smells are louder.

Hibernating quietly yet doing, incubating, feeding, plotting, gathering, restoring, stoking the fire of my practice. Gathering in, gathering around, ruminating together with like-minded souls. Seeking light in the dark.

Circle

Renewal, rebirth, hope, balance, rest, recovery, gratitude. Filling the home and heart with light, evergreens and treasures that hold our memories.

I drew, erased and redrew, at dusk and at dawn. Drawing unfamiliar faces and the dark. Memorialising a seed, found white lace and camelias, the space around me, circles and coldness. Burrowing underground for roots and branching networks. Drawing and printmaking with water, ice, inks, white and black charcoal and its dust on white wax, brown and transparent papers.

Casting a shadow to reveal the light. Feeling joy at discovering the space and light between Joan Mitchell’s abundence of colour.

Winter drawing, making the absent appear.

Winter. Circles.

JANE

When I draw,

I need to feel my way in through touch, both real and imaginary. When I draw, I search out what it means to be you whether you are a root, a twisted oak or my mother.

In drawing you, I draw you close to me, I understand you more and find that my world grows richer.

6 weeks of drawing together, as Autumn became Winter, I can now look at the drawings I made and am ready to listen to what they say to me about how to ‘Winter Well’.

We were invited to make visible the invisible, to draw the underground life of Winter. I made studies and mapped the root structures of plants in my garden. Through these drawings I have discovered that a key to Wintering Well is the sensitive negotiation of obstacles and an ability to adapt and change course.

I found a unifying pattern of life as I searched out and drew distorted, knobbly branches, trees that hugged close to the hillside and the curved, bent spine and twisted arthritic fingers of my mother. The forces and storms that each have been exposed to leave their marks. These drawings speak of the role of resilience and endurance in challenging times.

Monochrome… black and white, black on black, the subtleties of greys...speak not only of the starkness of Winter but also of the mistiness when things become unclear and indistinct. Drawing in the darkest night without a torch, depth perception diminishes, and shapes merge; a tree trunk and a patch of shadow become one. These drawings teach me of the mysteries that winter holds.

The drawings I made of the delicate and the precious, layered between transparent papers and revealed by letting light shine through them, were quiet drawings. These drawings lead me to treasure the peacefulness of winter, a quietening down and a call to live our inner space well.

I discovered the value of letting one drawing lead to another. I discovered that drawings can converse together regardless of whether they speak the same language. They may argue or agree, add to, or detract from what each other is saying but a dialogue is created and with this there is an incubating of the new within the old.

I realise that not all my drawings will Winter Well. I am excited to meet the next one!

MARY

As with many people the act of mark making began at a very early age as did my walking. In recent years the two actions of mark-making and walking have converged. I walk every day, over 2000 miles a year.

In Britain most of our landscape has been changed by the action of humans. It is in this mediated landscape that I work/walk. I prefer solitude and have a huge capacity for focus and pattern finding which is a reflection of my neurodiversity.

I am obsessed with finding ways to map my environment, to articulate the space I move through. My body draws an invisible line through the space in which I walk, I feel the ground under my feet, my dogs nose on my hand, the air on my face, I smell the sheep, I hear the skylark, the rustle of the gorse.

“Walking faces us with many landscapes: there is the landscape outside of us, and the landscape inside of us.” Ernesto Pujol, ‘Walking Art Practice: Reflections on Socially Engaged Paths’, 2018, p. 329, Triarchy Press, England.

My drawing is a 3D representation of the Winter’s progress towards the solstice, to gradually increasing light, growth and colour. My work is a combination of observation, sensation and invention in order to create a language to describe - the invisible made visible.

The imagery I make is often a mixture of memory, drawn or photographed features, to a source of something more tangible and real; a snail shell, old corrugated iron, flaking paint, wool hanging off a bush. However my drawing, my art, goes beyond the linear rendition of objects. I produce visual forms of concepts, emotions and temporal space.

As a conceptual artist, I draw from my own direct experiences, repeated, layered and shaken, like a Winter snow globe in an attempt to capture the atmosphere of a remembered event or situation and the intensity of feeling around it.

CAROLINE

Five-day drawing

Coldness overnight transforms water and graphite powder into brittle, glass like sheets. I arrange some shards from the broken sheets into an abstract form and take a photograph. The ice structure is taken inside and placed onto thick paper. Soon a watery pool becomes a record of how the warmth has melted the frozen structure. Much, longer still and the watery stain dries and leaves a trace, a drawing which looks to me like a Bowhead whale from Greenland.

Elegy to a melting world

London Dec 2022

You arrive in the darkness while we are sleeping Soft flakes gather momentum, layering silent and cold

Under your metamorphosing blanket the world is momentarily stilled Pale ghosts and monsters you make, trees bow and distort under their heavy coats

Snatches of colour zing and ping, berry red and rust Blinking, as if emerging from the back of old wardrobes, children rush to greet you Roll in and throw you Fine branches dusted white, emboss against a pale sky

Greenland Dec 2022

The Inuit have many names for different kinds of snow

To build an igloo you need hard snow

The best hard snow is called ‘Pugaq’

The cold wind from the ice sheet hardens the snow

This snow is vanishing as temperatures in the Artic rise

Dear Fungi,

One day I began to draw your mycelium encircling the earth. I looked under the jumble of winter leaves and frost. You were hidden so I imagined a dark place underground where you were slowly moving in all directions, joining up with the roots of all the great forests, connecting and nourishing the quiescent trees. It was comforting to think of you there like a protective blanket, ancient and immense. Your minute and delicate fibres reaching and deciding how best to move into the future. I went to find some of your fruit in my garden. I heard that you can sense my footsteps above you. As I looked, small mushrooms emerged from dark shadows. We were observing each other quietly by the goat willow. My feet and your hyphae were connected by the cold earth. I felt your tranquillity and balance. Drawing you allows me to savour that moment of wonder and hope, for a world where human systems might echo your balanced ways. Here is a drawing of myself as you.

Yours, Siri.

Dear Multiple Sclerosis,

We have lived together for 15 years, and you know more of me than I of you. You cover neurological landscapes that I never knew existed.

Yes, I have been told of where you situate and of your scattered, inflammatory appearance, however you are still unfamiliar to me, but I can feel you. Like in the natural world you are growing on your own terms, you stake your claim on grounds that should be untouched, by corroding, burning and devastating what was once there.

I have thoughtfully explored this subterrain you have carved for yourself, through line and mark making, depicting the layers and networks of blistering destruction I envisage. Capturing the vast complexities, between layers of waxed paper, holding you still.

While drawing you, I feel you less.

‘The brain is a world consisting of a number of continents and great stretches of unknown territory.’ Cajal

portraits biography

JACQUELINE AMIES

Jacqueline Amies

Walking, and observing the natural world have always been inspirations for her textile, photography and printmaking work.

Recently studying at West Dean college her work has developed into installations with 3D forms and assemblages.

Jackie has always found drawing difficult and it has been considered as her Archilles heel. The Drawing Correspondence has enabled a supportive, fun, and engaging environment that has given her peace, new confidence, and enjoyment in the drawing process without the fear of criticism.

@jackieamiesartist

ARPIT BHRGAVA

Arpit Bhargava

In his day job he is a researcher, understanding complex topics by talking to people. For the last 7 years, he has also had a drawing practice. Art to him is a 40 year plan. It is a deeply rewarding endeavour with infinite depth, with new languages to learn, communities to be a part of, and ways to live.

@ga.ruda

GILLIAN COOPER

Gillian’s practice is in installation, drawing and print and seeks to excavate the overlooked, hidden, intangible and ephemeral in the objects and natural processes of the everyday. Her works are hand made; the most direct and tactile expression, referencing difference and above all that which is human. Her recent solo exhibition of drawings and prints, NEST, explored migration, home and belonging through the forms of imaginary and recollected birds’ nests.Gillian has exhibited at gallery and site specific venues throughout the UK including Arnolfini, Bristol, The Exchange and Newlyn Galleries, the ICA London and a large scale temporary installation for Chiltern Sculpture Trail, Oxford. International exhibitions include HDK Berlin, Produzentengalerie Hanover and the Serbian Sculpture Biennale Pancevo.

JANE GREENSTREET

For the last five years I have lived on the Isle of Arran in Scotland looking out at the sea. For 30 years Chantraine Dance of Expression has been a central focus in my life both as a dance teacher and performer. In the last 3 years I have become interested in finding a link between the ‘inhabited gesture’ of dance and embodied drawings. Drawing, like dance, allows me to capture an intuitive, immediate, and intimate physical response to the world I experience daily. I treasure it for what it reveals.

MARY LOW

Mary Low was born in rural Yorkshire and now resides in the Welsh Hills. She became a full time artist in 2002. Mary is neurodiverse and although self-taught her experimentation and curiosity allowed her to develop her art into abstract paintings, collaborative art projects, prints and land art. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and overseas.

@marylowart www.marylowart.com

LEONIE SIRI MACMILLAN

MA Film and Theatre, PGDip Electronic Imaging. Has been working with ceramics for nearly 30 years.

Interested in creating narratives where science and mythology intertwine in comment to the human condition. Loves to draw.

www.siriceramics.com @leoniemacmillan

CAROLINE MACDONALD

Caroline is primarily a printmaker, interested in evoking and working with emergent and responsive surfaces, materials, bodies, and spaces. Using the practice of marbling and a variety of digital ruptures to invite in the unexpected and enable chance to play a role in her practice. Mirrors, combined with liquids, create further unpredictable repetitions and depths in the surface of her works. Extra dimensions are implied though the splicing and digital reverse and reconfiguration of forms when orientated around the fold.

KIRSTY STEVENS

Designer & Visual Artist using drawing to explore the chronic illnesses that she lives with, Multiple Sclerosis and Endometriosis. With the aim to gain a better understanding herself but also to raise awareness by making these invisible illnesses visible, combining art & science.

Selected as V+A Dundee, Scotland’s Design Museum, First Design Champion 2017. Jewellery &Metal Design BDes Hons, Duncan Of Jordanstone Art School, Dundee.

@charcotstudio www.charcot.co.uk

Published as an outcome of the Drawing Correspondence Program: WINTERING WELL

© 2023 WINTERING WELL participants & contributors, Drawing Correspondence

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