The Notebook Drawings
23rd November
- 15th December 2024
part of Sarah Bennett's 'Vitrine' project, Exeter

The notebook drawings started just over a year ago. I’ve found that these small notebooks offer a liminal and quite private space, a space of intense looking where I can only concentrate on the small and specific.

What I have chosen to draw are natural forms, plants either taken from our garden or one of our local walks. One of the first subjects was a handful of grass. I had already determined that I would do 10 drawings of each subject as a form of discipline and this first set of drawings was executed quite quickly, just a few minutes on each drawing but what I hadn’t quite anticipated as I peered at this grass is how intense my engagement and meticulous sense of it would become. Minutely observing a plant as it fades through lack of nourishment is exciting in itself but set against an experimentation with different materials and my own almost separate search to understand what drawing – drawing anything – might mean, is based in the practice of intense observation.

This work is about re-learning to draw, beginning to understand the complexity of it as I observe the minute and intricate details of plant forms, specifically as they fade.