How to Catch Time

I have been thinking about how drawing and diagrams intersect and clearly there is much there - ideas are abundant and this may be one to investigate more thoroughly after the MA. Art and science interests me and it’s topical - the relationship between empathy, drawing and messaging is really significant, the ways in which art might bring across cold data sets and give storying opportunities to otherwise impenetrable knowledge. Drawing is an access point.

I made this drawing whilst watching how mycelium grow on a time lapse YouTube video and plotted a little dot at the points where the mycelium changes direction or does something new. I used phosphorescent paint to speak to communication systems, which exist widely in the fungal world and bioindicator species use flashing lights etc, I have looked into glow worms, moths, fungi and other fairy light fanciers. I then sewed between the dots, playing with chaos and order, the tension between playing with adherence to an idea and flow. I then found the resultant drawing a little tight and sky-constellation like, lacking feeling and story, so I cut the lines, making breaks, cuts and events in the flow, fraying the networks and interrupting their progress and order. Each element seems to mark time - this phrase again - catching a moment of time in layers and with different expressions, dots, holes, fixed and taped thread ends, flowing, hanging, directionless cut other-ends, shapes and forms between.

This for me is drawing as visual thinking, exploring ideas in the doing without planning or anticipation or even expectation. I don’t feel much connection to the final piece and I may continue to work it into destruction just to see where my thinking goes, but it has been an interesting thought-wander.