Touching time by John Sunderland
One of the artworks I have been making over the last fortnight is a drawing using mud, pencil, charcoal and white oil pastel on drafting paper. This landscape work has been photographed as it progresses – the final works from this piece are intended to be photographs of the drawing because what interests me is the processes of change in this work, both those I make and the changes that occur naturally such as wetting and drying. For the first time today I sprayed the drawing with a fine water mist, photographing it before and then sequentially as it dried. I was amazed at how the differential drying process changed the emphasis on the different layers in the image. It appears to reflect the way that features are more or less visible in different conditions in the ground. The changes are drastic, some soils (each one is from a feature or layer on the site) are barely visible in some states and clear as day in others. I have always been interested in how landscapes change and am excited to find quite a direct way of interpreting this in this artwork.
Beaubec Excavations 