Retracing/Redrawing 1993/2023

Towards the end of my A levels, I made a small sketchbook, opening in landscape format. The first drawing in the book was a view from my bedroom window, the second and third drawings were made two days later, on the afternoon of my last day at school. I filled the sketchbook over the course of the summer before starting art school at the end of September. This was a unique and intense period of working from observation, something I'd never do again: once at art school, and, in particular, once I had experienced the darkroom and got my first SLR camera, photography took over from drawing as a way of recording experience, and, inevitably, studying art itself made working from observation feel like an amateur pursuit, although perhaps with more emphasis on the original sense of that word.

The revisited drawings were originally posted on Instagram on the day that they were made, with the descritions used here; this gallery shows a selection of the drawings from the project.