WIND CONCEPTUALIZATIONS

Early 2021 is where my journey begins, to try and find some answers to the question, how do we visualise the invisible? I started to pull large swathes of drawing paper out from a roll, which had laid dormant in a dusty forgot corner of my studio. Using whatever paint and mark making materials I could find I started frantically to produce dozens of drawings and paintings on paper, each one an immediate and intuitive response to a repeating mantra, what does the wind look like? The resulting body of work consisted of over 170 paintings, each presenting a unique vision or rather a conceptual interpretation of the wind. These “Wind Conceptualizations” continue to develop new work as I find different mediums, methods and ways of exploring the question. The “Wind Conceptualizations” are very much just concepts, imaginings of wind patterns through personal experience. Depictions of what the wind might look like, were it visible to us on a light spectrum that we could see. In addition to reflecting on experience the only way to try and conceptualise and understand a natural phenomena, like the wind, is through educating yourself, but most importantly through complete immersion and interaction.

I will frequently take my sketchbook out on walks with me, drawing my very immediate response to the winds around me, trying to determine direction, flow and force. Even venturing out onto Ham Hill during storm Eunice on the 18th February. I had checked when the storm was reported to be at its peak and ventured out. Winds gusted up to around 90mph, although at times I had taken some shelter within the quarry’s relative sanctuary. The experience and the sense of complete vulnerability was exhilarating. Taking every effort just to stay standing, even having to crouch in an almost fetal position. Bracing my sketchbook with one hand, clenched over the top, and holding hard against my chest, I placed my pen firmly on the paper and just let the fight begin. I had no need to draw, the wind was doing all the work, I was just trying to keep the pen on the paper. The marks created were fascinating to me, these were a record of my interaction with the wind specific to that time and place. The struggle quite clear to see in black and white. I had been a human weather conductor but during storm Eunice I realised I was just an instrument.