25 years ago frustration at passively witnessing wildlife spectacles caused me to look for a means of actively exploring what I was experiencing.
Drawing,painting and printmaking are now familiar toolkits helping me to clarify what I am seeing and ideally communicating some of that to other people.
Exaggeration or simplification, finding different ways of interpretion, producing visual equivalents for something of what it was like to witness a scene.
In the field my main way of working is memory drawing. Watching until there is a key posture, or a tipping point in how much the memory can contain. Then trying to distill what it is I have been seeing, using the pent up excitement from watching to make drawings.
Working quickly, focussed on the sheet of paper, now an object with it’s own life, trying to be responsive to what the media suggest…. choices of thick or thin, fast or slow, smooth or scratchy?
In the studio with experiences more completely digested I use printmaking techniques to explore a theme. Different approaches are like different flavours, or textures when eating and suggest new avenues for interpretation.