Muted, sometimes voices too Drawing

Muted, sometimes voices too (2021), 90 x 235cm, digital print, charcoal and pigment on Hahnemuhle rice paper, shown at the Copeland Gallery, 'Unmute' MAFA Group Show. In 2021 I began to explore the composer Pauline Oliveros' listening method of 'Deep Listening' to create a series of soundwalk drawings as I walked from an estate located next to the Barbican (the Golden Lane Estate - built by the same architects: Chamberlin, Powell and Bon), across the high-rise, over the river, and south, through Southwark and down to Camberwell. Through walking, listening and drawing, I can transform sound to highlight particular contours and meanings that appear as marks, creating a poetical experience of a particular journey. These series of drawings were then digitally layered (as they traced the same path) and enlarged so that I could 're-enter' the same route and explore the marks through layering with charcoal, pigment, and pastel. The work could also be described as a form of landscape, and has been compared to the traditional Chinese form of landscape painting called Shanshui painting - the purpose of which was not to reproduce the grandeur of the mountain scenery but rather to grasp 'an emotion or atmosphere so as to capture a sense of the numinous'.