SAMANTHA CLARK

I live in a place of water. My home lies beside a wide freshwater loch, Orkney’s main reservoir. The burn that flows out of it skirts the edge of the garden. The sea that encircles this island is just visible, over the rise of the fields. This water has seeped into me, into my bones, my blood, my dreams and drawings. Every day I watch this water. And then I try to draw it.

Drawing water is a paradox. Water’s essence is movement. And yet drawing takes the hand’s gesture and holds it still, recorded in the mark that remains. The slow, repetitive method I employ makes each drawing a receptacle of time, a net that gathers up all these moments so they are visible in a single instant that shows the timespan of the drawing’s own making. Not to stop the flow, but to introduce a meander, an eddy. Then you can get beneath the undulating surface glitter and see there is depth there too.

Drawing is a way to come to a place of stillness in which I can pay more careful attention to the natural world, to the fleeting moment and how rich and complex our experience of it is. It is a tool for attuning the mind, for bringing it into the present with a kind of calm focus, and then sharing that experience with the viewer.

Samantha Clark