For some the sketch is a small thing, temporary and off-hand; often only the first trace of something new. For me sketching is an end in itself, a constant and distracting conversation on the margins of my more pressing and practical world. Lately I have wondered how this conversation started, and whence came this line that has so much to say. This retrospective traces my relationship with this talkative creature; from its beginnings in the intense, time-limited contest of life drawing; through studio sessions fixated on developing the autonomic line, through chance and randomness and back again to an illustrative style that includes them all.

Drawing is the imagination made present, and exploring modern thinkers’ ideas about the imaginary has shed some light upon this journey

This work is an attempt to capture the lucid dream of sketching for its own sake. A close look will often reveal both text and pencil’s wandering path, the stray lines and circling uncertainties that wake the imagination. The images themselves speak to these uncertainties, of the charm and argument and circling that all revolve into the resolution of a moment.