Bodily Sound Drawings and Translating Energy.

Following on from my first series of ‘Sound Drawings’, I went on a walk to Sunny Cove beach with the aim to create some much larger scale, bodily ‘Sound Drawings’ and also collected some natural clay to use in some sculptural works.

I completed two of these ‘Sound Drawings’, done on large pieces of canvas: I lay face down on the fabric, holding a piece of clay or rock in each hand, closed my eyes and drew on the canvas, responding to the ambient natural sounds that I was hearing, in the same way that I did when doing the A4 size ‘Sound Drawings’ on paper. This helped me to really focus my attention on the environment I was in, capturing that almost meditative state that I felt when first trying this type of drawing, like I was tuning into the sound energy of the landscape, translating it into visuals.

Some other walks, to Gylly beach and to Pendennis Point beaches, lead me to explore the idea of more temporal ‘Sound Drawings’. I took the concept of my ‘Sound Drawings’ and did some directly into the sand, some into sand laid over a sketchbook page and one into some natural clay pasted onto a rock.

'Sound Drawings' done in sand

The sand drawings, though interesting in how they were so temporal and in-the-moment, were difficult to leave defined marks in, besides a few undulating lines, however the outcome of the drawing/carving into the natural clay was much clearer and drawing-like. It was interesting to note the actual feeling of ‘give’ in the surface of both the sand and the clay when I was drawing onto them, made even more noticeable by having my eyes closed.

This led to the beginnings of an exploration into sculpture, following a similar method as my ‘Sound Drawings’, but instead of drawing on paper, I would sculpt and manipulate a piece of natural clay in response to the natural sounds I was hearing, creating a more tangible representation of the sound of that particular environment. This idea of a physical, palpable depiction of sound, the opposite of the word tangible, intrigued me, again drawing on the idea of translated energy, something that has become an underlying theme in my recent work.

Natural clay pasted onto a rock

'Sound Drawing' in the natural clay

The research aspect of my practice has begun to grow and gain significance; it runs alongside my art practice, with each area informing the other. I began to look further into the ideas of walking as a practice and its history, using Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit and Psychogeography by Merlin Coverley as my key points of reference, leading me onto the idea of the Flâneur, a practitioner of the non-functional walk, something that resonated with me greatly, being somewhat of a Flâneur myself. I have also been deepening my research into Richard Long, whose practice revolves around the idea of the walk as an art form. Long’s practice sometimes works with the idea of subjective measurement, something that, since hearing the term mentioned by musician Nitin Sawhney in reference to Long’s work on a Radio 4 programme with Long himself, has been a concept that I have been researching in both my practical work as well as relating it to my research. The idea of ‘mapping’ and measuring features of the landscape in unconventional ways has begun to be the emphasis of my artwork.