About

Artist’s Statement

In a dusty portfolio under my desk there is a tattered chalk drawing made when I was seven years old. It depicts an old oak tree under the light of a full moon. Drawing has always been an important part of my life and is the means of communication that comes most naturally to me. Making marks on paper is a way in which I process the world around me and gives expression and substance to my imagination. I feel a strong link between the physical act of drawing and the development of ideas and images. An idea in my mind that may initially be approximate or indistinct often comes to more fully to life as my hand and brain begin to work together to make a drawing.

I like that I am participating in and keeping alive one of the oldest forms of human communication (the earliest known form of drawing is said to date back 73,000 years).

Drawing has also been vital to my work as a landscape architect and I continue to draft plans by hand in the traditional way. Using my experience in working directly with natural materials such as earth and stone, I try to convey their particular qualities in my design drawings. This traditional way of doing things preserves a link between the physical world and the design ideas that I am communicating to builders and craftspeople.

I am currently working a book of drawings or “story without words” with the working title of The Hollow Island Sketchbook.