Graphite Illustrations

Bridges between Visual Worlds

 

My large scale, hyper realistic graphite drawings are often paired with painted, collage elements. These drawings serve as the bridge between our everyday world, or perhaps our everyday dream world and the entrance into the fairytale universe of Feral Biome. Often these drawings are intimate and personal, entwined with impressions from my own childhood, memories of my children growing up and the domestic space I inhabit as a mother. For me this has been a liminal space that can be in tension with the artistic process, but has also become a wellspring of artistic inspiration. These drawings represent many things at one time: an invocation, an incantation of blessing for protection, a signifier of tenderness, a sign post for paths to well-being, a hope to imbue the children in the illustrations with the fierceness, resilience, and shield of love they will need to thrive in a beautiful, complicated and dangerous world.

 

While these illustrations originate in my own context I see them as a form of archetype investigating the imagination and dream worlds of the children I know.