I feel as though I have had a pause from making post the collaboration. This was partly due to moving into a more exploratory drawing process, partly making time for reading and research, and also being aware of a lack of visual material for stimuli. The notion of lines, looking for and recognising them among all the other visuals we encounter daily, must remain conceptual. However, the process of physically making marks and reenacting gesture must be authentic. The authentic line cannot be copied or practised, but can it be planned. It can certainly be intended. The intention of the line should be a response and immediate. Without voyaging into abstraction, how can I make work using this idea?

• partial line
• obliterated line
• an ‘active’ line
• additive or reductive lines
• tracing
• loose and gestural lines
• outlines
• repetition and layers
• inscribing
• smudging and smearing
• erasing
• redrawing and retracing
• incidental and found lines e.g. tears, edges, light

I have extracted some photographs from my phone which have captured found lines – I’m intending to work from these on new unprimed canvases and paper during January.

I have become fascinated by the drawing and redrawing. Making line and working from these again. I am sure that I have written about this before but I am still puzzled by the nature of making and copying/recreating with new knowledge. Artists who produce work in series or editions/versions play with this idea. This is different to a body of work which has common themes. I am also thinking about meandering between ideas and motifs in Art and the nature of re-walking a pathway. I want to deviate but I am drawn back to the known route. I cannot make spontaneously without reference, but my though process around making is intentional (good) but may become deliberate (cliched). I am fighting abstraction but the nature of line is that it is by definition abstract until in context of other marks and lines. So I will continue to draw and redraw, and explore the relationship between line and gesture, intention, performance and trace.