Onwards

By Carla McRae

"I draw with the aim to express universal human feeling and convey an atmosphere with refined lines, forms and spaciousness. Looking at line can be a transportive, sensory experience. I love that a line can scream or hum or sing, it can make you want to trace its forms with your finger or it might leave the texture of childhood on your tongue.

Drawing with line allows me to attempt to filter down and express an opaque feeling with more clarity than my words. The characters in these ink drawings were born in fluid spontaneity on odd paper off-cuts in moments between projects. Rough pencil lines were drawn on scrap paper, traced by a fat chisel-tipped marker to refine, and finally redrawn once more with brush and ink. The fleeting empty moments that surface between the dramas of everyday life are reflected in the figures and their subtle body language; a momentary pause to daydream, the soft exhale, silence between songs. Imagined deep in their own world and on-the-brink of movement, these drawings are windows to view and recognise those quiet, intimate human moments held in solitude."