My ongoing drawing research and image-making practices explore the external with the internal using a pencil and stylus to travel across the underlying images, meticulously scanning and scrutinising every contour, seeking, and responding to hidden anomalies. The phenomenological nature of these drawings and the act of drawing itself evokes the shared experience of looking for signs of change in the form of disease and decay within the body through medical imaging.

Even the physical act of doodling, continuous line drawing, tracing and colouring-in can be meditative, boost memory retention and creative thinking by reducing the load on cognitive processes and self-editing. Although learning to draw is time-consuming, and comes with barriers for many, low fidelity drawing activities offer an accessible pathway to visual storytelling and illustration.

Body, Mind, Matter, Soul is a deeply personal series of drawings that began exploring the marks made by, and with, the body while dealing with serious illness and grief. The beginnings of these four artworks were kept hidden from public view for over eight years following the passing of my partner, Peter Saunders. The project originated as an exploration of the human body and its imprints through large mono-prints on paper. These experiments were initially created as part of my doctoral research into the role and value of drawing in the creative process.