Rock Ridge Series

These drawings were done on regular visits to the woods in the Rock Ridge area of Maple Ridge, in the traditional lands of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Sto:lo peoples.  The drawing process enables a special tacit and embodied connection with what is being drawn.  This particular wooded place is one I love to visit, yet it is also a place that is not preserved from development. 

I’m interested in how we might listen to what a place has to tell us, yet am also aware that we bring to the landscape so much of our own framework.  In his book Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama speaks of “the heavy cultural backpacks we lug along with us on the trail.”  While this may or may not be a good thing, it seems inevitable yet important to be aware of.  Ideas of wrapping/packaging, or, of imposing a pattern of order in the form of a grid is what I was thinking of with the lines created by the thread.  

Ink on watercolour paper, thread