Drawn Away
Drawings made in passing — between trains, in cafés, on benches. Watercolour, ink, and whatever paper scraps were in the pocket. Thirty years of being somewhere for long enough to look properly.
This is a practice I've kept for thirty years — a small notebook, a fountain pen, watercolours when there's time. The drawings happen between things. Waiting for a train at Piazza Saint Antonio. The cathedral steps in Cortona. A short stop at Birling Gap on the way to somewhere else.
The places aren't the point exactly, though they make a kind of geography of the years. The point is the staying still — long enough to look properly, long enough to see what's actually in front of me. Drawing is a slow form of attention. It changes what gets remembered.
The earliest are from Kenya in 1993 — line portraits in ink, trying to catch what was there. The Italian ones in the late nineties carry whatever bus ticket or café card happened to be in the pocket that morning, glued in as a backing note. The most recent are Venice Beach and Hollywood in 2024, looser and more confident in colour. The style has settled. The practice hasn't changed.
Editorial — placeholder body. Your voice will land this better. Two or three paragraphs in the register of the Salvation Mountain essay would be the right calibration: personal, observational, specific to the practice. Rewrite when ready.
Piazza Saint Antonio, Sorrento, Italy. May 1998.
St Andreas, Amalfi, Italy. May 1998.
Cortona, Italy. July 1996.
Capri, Italy. June 1998.
Amalfi, Italy. May 1998.
Birling Gap, England. August 1993.
Jewish Cemetery, Prague. 1999.
Klementinum, Křižovnické náměstí, Prague. 1999.
Santa Maria Assunta, Positano, Italy. May 1998.
Masai Mara, Kenya. July 1993.
Chief Charles Kamau, Thompson Falls, Kenya. June 1993.
Les Grandes Montets, Argentière, Chamonix, France. April 1997.
Market, Hoi An Old Town, Vietnam. July 2023.
Mollusk Surf Shop, Venice Beach, California, USA. June 2024.
Pali Hotel, Hollywood, California, USA. June 2024.
Wenceslas Square, Prague. 2000.
