Drawing Connections (2022) was a Cork City (Ireland) based collaboration between artist studio, Sample Studios, and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design’s Research Hub, Drawbridge. Participating artists responded to drawings from the permanent collection at the Crawford Art Gallery, and later exhibited final works at The Lord Mayor’s Pavillon.

Understory (After Fay) is my response to Vermeer Lady Writing A Letter (2007) by Irish Artist Brian Fay. Through the process, I’ve come to better understand how drawing may register history and map ephemeral processes materially.

Understory (After Fay), Debris Drawing, Mud on Paper, 76 x 114 cm, 2022

Understory (After Fay): Process Shot (Origin Story), Unearthed Fabric, The Junction – Toronto, 29 x 26 cm, 2022

Understory (After Fay): Process Shot (Trace), Ink on Mylar, 76 x 114 cm, 2022

There is the work we intend to make, and the work that results, and a thick space between those two experiences. It’s in this gap that materials often reveal their agency.

While transcribing the markings left on fabric once buried underground, the weight of my body imprinted itself. A thin coat of mud now clings delicately to paper, leaving an image on the brink of erasure. This roadmap of activity exposes histories that lurked past my sightline. In seeing beyond the image, I’ve found a material language for entropy.

In this intersection between drawing, printmaking, and performative acts of care, an architecture of transition remains.