Drawing how it feels to be outdoors

Drawing - making marks on paper with a tool - allows me to sync what I see, feel and think with the gradually emerging line-work on the paper.  The finished drawing is also a document of my experiential process. The drawing is a ‘new thing’ that I facilitate to come about in the here and now. It is an addition to the reality that's already there. The drawing that is seen here and the two other ones below were made after I had spent time outdoors. Back in the studio, I made these drawings to re-connect with my outdoor experience. In the instance of the first drawing I remembered and was impressed by being in the vicinity of a large metal container at the back of Macclesfield Leisure Centre. I made a drawing of how I remembered standing there, seeing the surroundings, and though my back was turned to the container, I felt its huge spatial presence. Whilst I was making the drawing, sitting at my desk, my memory of the time in the vicinity of this container became real again and the drawing process made me dive deeper into how I remembered the situation, it brought it to life again. Though some my these feelings are not communicated visually in the drawing, making the drawing made me engage further with this past experience and made me aware of and critically think about my time outdoors. The other two drawings shown here also relate to situations outdoors where I had spent time just standing or sitting, taking in what I heard, felt and saw, but, not doing much else. Standing and sitting  in environments without practically doing anything other was a ‘practice’ that I entertained for a while in order to explore exactly that: how I felt in different outdoor places, in which way my posture might impact on experiencing myself and the environment, how I managed just being still. I called such experiments with myself being outdoors as my ‘site sensing practice’. When I was back in the studio I made drawings that reflected how I had experienced my site sensing moments. Making several such drawings, I discovered that certain themes emerged whilst I made them: I found out that my vicinity to walls, to large objects, or particular landscape features like a steep slope impacted on my feelings of being ‘trapped’ by a close earth bank or that a large object dominated my visual attention.