This week I have begun some drawing studies of a few of my finds. These feel like tentative steps as I work through a number of possibilities for how best to scrutinise them as openly and objectively as possible. Restricted to a black pen on cartridge paper, I am working from my studio photographs, magnified, so I might pull out the smallest marks and details. It’s a strange process, looking at these random, incidental and dispensable objects at such close proximity; scrutinising every mark, label, stain, broken edge. The drawing process does new and unexpected things and allows me to get to know them like nothing else so far. I first put them in bags, mostly while looking away; I scrubbed them through the scent of soapy water at arm’s length and gloved up; I photographed them ducking behind a camera and awash with white lights and high contrast; now as I draw from these rather clinical and stark images I am adequately distanced enough to see them afresh and as slightly alien things.
