The Breath

The subject of breathing entered my work via a very invasive and personal means.

I have had trouble breathing for as long as I can remember. As my condition worsened, I underwent a series of medical investigations to try to understand what was going wrong. One procedure, called a Continuous Laryngoscopy, required a tube to be inserted into my nose to look at my larynx. This line that was physically put in my head has been stuck in there metaphorically ever since. 

It is this notion of a physical and metaphorical line probing about its way, traversing internal terrains and revealing unknown bodily landscapes that reflexively kick started my inquiry on this MA. The line becomes the vehicle with which to navigate this idea of breathing. 

My referent to breathing does not have a fixed or literal standpoint. I am focusing on the embodiment of breath, the movements, and nuances. It is the doing and active elements, the physicality, that I seek. 

‘Breathing is movement’ (Bostock, 2020 p. 39), there are intangible elements at work, but forces are exerted which capture perceptible effects. I am talking about this in a very human sense, it is something lived, felt, feelings and sensations (and by default, also an activity of being alive). I am interested in how these essences can be echoed and draw parallels to the processes and activity of drawing, and how I can then get my own works to ‘breathe.’ 

-  Movement, in/out, expand/contact, ascend/descend 

-  Facilitates an exchange from external to internal environment 

-  Unconscious and automatic, but it can be altered with conscious control up to a point 

-  Signal sending (communication, brain + body to adjust breathing rate depending on activity) 

-  The respiratory system is made up of many parts to make this bigger whole, the synergy, coordination, and combined efforts 

-  The movements, of muscles, alterations and changing shapes to allow for pressure changes to draw air in/out