Drawing Statement

This is the Drawing statement for my first assessment of my degree.

I decided to challenge the definition of drawing for my journey project. I began by collecting the nearest part of the River Soar in jars of water to show my journey along the river. Inspired by Richard Long, I decided to also collect mud and rubbish along this small journey and eventually make a painting. However, I found the initial collecting of water a unique way of drawing and decided to go on a journey along the whole of the River Soar and take systematic recordings along the way. I chose each location due to its accessibility and collected sticks, soil, sound, photographic evidence and water at each of the 7 locations down the rivers course. This project could be related to a scientific experiment due to the precise specifications I needed at each site but this was so I can easily distinguish the change going down the river. Being inspired by Richard Longs work, I found that recording down feelings I felt at each site, it was a linguistic description and another form of material I could work with.

When it came to presenting my findings, I tried not to make the installation feel like a museum piece. But I found this difficult has I had loads of material to work with. I decided that I wanted the jars to represent the river, the distance between the jars to represent each location, separated by fingerprints ( a finger print= 1 Mile) again inspired by Richard Long. I intended everything to be linked as there was a lot of work and I wanted the eye to travel all over the installation, this was created by the string and lines of soil. Also by using the wall, I could create 2 separate installations depending on the area in which I exhibited the piece. By handwriting the words from each location, I gave a personal feel to this scientific study, also it fit the stereotypical view upon drawing as each letter was created using pencil. This idea was inspired by Liam Gillick’s linguistic installations and Lawrence Weiner’s work, where he describes a sculpture via writing on a wall.

I feel I have fulfilled the definition of journey through a personal but scientific approach and have responded to the drawing concept in a conceptual way. After reading a short excerpt from Robert MacFarlane’s book ‘Path’, I feel that I have made a line through Leicestershire with my car, almost following the path of the River Soar.