Knotted

Every line in this drawing is made by hand, one at a time. There is no repeated element, no mirrored half, no traced guide underneath. Each line is drawn in a single continuous movement, and then the next one starts.

The drawing was built up in layers rather than worked outward from any one point. Colours were switched constantly — a run of red, then blue threading through it, then white over the top — so the surface accumulated in passes rather than sections. Lines were woven into whatever was already there, going over some and under others as the drawing thickened.

That layered order is what produces the depth. Because no colour was completed before another began, none of them sits cleanly in front or behind; red passes over blue in one place and beneath it a few inches away. The eye keeps trying to resolve which layer is uppermost and can’t settle, and the field seems to move as a result.

The knot just above centre is the one place where the lines break their long sweeping runs and loop back over one another. Everything else in the drawing reads in relation to it.

From across a room the surface holds together as a single continuous field. Up close it separates back into what it is — individual marks, each with its own wobble, thickening and hesitation.