My work investigates ways of being with place through the combined action of drawing and walking. It holds texture and observation at its centre, engaging my sensing body in the practice of art making and recording. Drawing and walking become a mapping activity at the heart of a research methodology about place and the connections formed with(in) environments.

I engage with ideas of cartography exploring how people interweave with place. In this current moment, as a visitor not native to Glasgow, I am interested in recording the relationships we have with spaces as visitors, apparently disconnected from the layers of an environment’s history. I have been repeatedly making walks along the canal in Glasgow; sharing the path with cyclists, dog walkers, commuters and fishers. The methodology of discovering place through mark-making excavates the joint histories of the canal by drawing attention to the many experiences of the waterways and its towpaths. By repeatedly following the canal’s edge, a collaborative storytelling between path and walker emerges.

I use various intuitive mark-making techniques such as mono-printing, graphite rubbing and photographing to record textures, sounds and sensations while walking or cycling. Rather than searching for things to draw, I aim to consider the textures of the environment at that particular moment; any variation caused by weather, transport mode (running, walking, cycling), footprints or the tracks of animals can easily go unnoticed like the sound of the pigeons under a bridge, a cyclist’s tracks or the breeze changing the pattern of the surface of the water: I wish to use ideas of map making to explore what I experience, perceive, remember and interpret from interactions with environments.

This research methodology can be lifted and explored across various locations and times.

My degree show piece Mud Map is an installation of drawings acting as artefacts of this research. I have been facilitating workshops as extensions of my drawing practice; in response to a group walk along the canal, participants use mark-making to create a collaborative map, tuning into the sensory experience of the environment. I have Tally Tunnell, Molly Andrews, and Georgie Lawrence to thank among others for their assistance during these workshops.