Drawing and thinking

The bus journey from Indre Arna train station, to Sletta bus stop in Ytre Arna, takes about five minutes. It twists around the northeast fjord-line of Bergen municipality, looping past farmland, small industrial units and intersecting road systems. In the near and far distance, houses, vehicles, sign posts, trees, water, islands, peninsulas and mountainscapes loom in and out of sight, shifting constantly their positions within the bus window's frame.

Recently, I began making pencil drawings during these bus journeys, allowing my eyes to walk a single line around a sheet of A4 paper, for the short duration of the trip. It’s become a kind of visual diary. The process of making these drawings is fascinating - no sooner have I begun to mark the line or angle of something I see (I never look at the paper), than the motion of the bus causes it to change direction or perspective. Each drawing I do is a document, then, not so much of what I’ve seen, but of the motion between instances of visual perception.

The colours, I add afterwards. The different shades of red I’ve been experimenting with and the direction and intensity of the marks really impacts how the images ‘read’.