My hand freezes before it kills. And then I wake.

I’ve been thinking lately about the moment when I step away from a drawing, and those moments when I step away too late.

I begin a charcoal drawing with dust — either blowing it onto the surface or sanding a stick from above so that it rains down on the paper.  Forms call, and at times the temptation is to leave the work there.  Instead I sweep my hand over the paper and in that movement mark the first moment of loss.

The white of the sheet disappears and becomes a kind of field. I work into it with my hands, darkening some areas, lifting light from others. Forms gather again — tentatively, as though emerging from weather.  I layer more tone, lighten, layer, and disturb the surface once again if it begins to look too clear.

It feels necessary to keep the drawing alive a little longer, to prevent it from settling too quickly into description.

Eventually there comes a moment when something has appeared that feels both present and fragile. If I go further I sense that I will lose it. The drawing will harden or collapse back into the field.

So I stop — still my hand before it recognises what is there and in so doing kills.

It has occurred to me only recently that this may be what my drawings are: brief moments in which something appears and is held there for a while before it disappears again.

I don’t know if this is how I will always work. It is simply what I recognise in the drawings I am making now.