Ink on paper, 2023 – ongoing series
Although gestural lines and marks carry the imprint of the bodies that have made them, and therefore seem to be part of the phenomenal world, nevertheless, line itself – abstract, directional or imitative – does not exist in the observable world. Line is a representational convention, if a primary element in the formal arsenal of making art.
Deanna Petherbridge, The Primacy of Drawing, p. 90
There are lines in the landscape because every landscape is forged in movement, and because this movement leaves material traces along the manifold paths of its proceeding. To perceive these lines is not to see things as they are but to see the directions along which things are moving.
Tim Ingold, Correspondences, p. 169
The rings of Saturn are a conglomerate of millions of particles of ice and rock in orbit around the planet. They look like a vinyl record. The linearity of the rings is an optical illusion created by distance, isn’t it? If lines are only a graphic convention, Saturn’s rings are not lines; only their representations are. The Cassini raw images are full of lines of all sorts of thickness, consistency, and tone. Some are sharp and opaque; others are flimsy, translucent. Some are straight; some are curved. Some lines represent the rings; others represent cosmic rays hitting the sensors, and groups of concentric circles in other images are the effect of dust particles stuck on the camera lens, a common type of artefact in astrophotography known as ‘dust doughnuts’.
I began drawing lines with ink on grids of damp thin paper. As the paper dries, my lines get distorted and expanded; spots appear, and the water, ink and paper somehow repel one another. The paper, not intended for wet media, crinkles, like a papery orange peel skin. Natural forces distort my gestures and dictate the final form of the drawing. The circle is only implied, never completed, never closed. The grid adds its disturbances; it joins and separates simultaneously. Gesture, ink, water, and paper are the four elements interlocked in a network of reactions. Each with its temperament, finding a balance.
This was my way of participating in the lines of Saturn’s rings and the lines of the Cassini raw images: drawing lines that are partly disintegrating, partly cohering. This work emerged as part of Uncalibrated, my PhD practice-led research responding to the unprocessed images from the Cassini mission to Saturn. The Cassini raw images are public and can be found here. To view more of my works connected to the PhD click here.
