Body Drawing Series
(body + land drawings)
This work began as a result of health problems that involved me with issues of my body and its responses to environmental pressures, its vulnerability, the sources of health and well-being, the threats to these, and alternative means of healing. I used myself as the subject for the work and yet I do not see the drawings as self-portraits. Rather, I see myself as experiencing late twentieth century culture in much the same way as my fellow humans do.
My proposal to the Camargo Foundation in 2000 was based on walking and making work from things found on the walks. As I hiked and carried out this proposal on site in the south of France, I experienced chronic pain. This pain, and subsequent x-ray images of my hip, caused strong identification with the boney white curve of the prominent landform known locally as the Crown Of Charlemagne. Eventually a drawing emerged that established an intimate connection between my body and this landform. Using earth pigments I collected in the local landscape, I printed forms identifying geography and geology using my body as the means of making the prints. In My Hip as the Couronne de Charlemagne (Crown of Charlemagne), and other drawings such as My Body as the Cap Canaille, I began to depict myself as the landscape.