Paper-pencil-chisel-stone

Artists Statements

Beauty in a scene, which at first glance, appears to be strangely ordinary is what truly interests me and it’s through the process of drawing that I strive to reveal this. I seek traces that are current or historic, are seasonal or daily or are simply once in time. A trace of something magic lying within the mundane.

JGC 2025

The principal material onto which I draw is stone. The chisel tears into the surface, scraping white abrasions into the black stone, as it strives to gather the form into itself. Each mark serves a purpose, but isn’t cherished for its own sake. Its value in the whole is equal to how long it lasts before another scrape of the chisel obliterates it; that mark in turn to be supplanted by subsequent marks and scrapes. Hundreds of thousands of these serve to gather up the form from the loose, flabby boulder. They tuck the drawing’s surface into itself where it needs to be tucked and wrap it ever tighter, until a stage is reached where the drawn surface stretches into form. Fragments of the drawing remain proud of the form, having the appearance of a lesion on the surface, through which the subjacent quality of the rock can be seen. I am intent on immediacy and spontaneity and hence the drawings which I produces are part of the process itself of direct carving.

MQ 2025

ALL drawings photographed by Ros Kavanagh ©2025