Every day I reunite my body and limbs. They are mostly out of time - some move ahead, others lag or stall. Each morning I bring both hands to paper with pencil as a way of gathering what is present. Everything arrives out of order. Pieces are missing, things skip. I draw anyway, without trying to make meaning. Cadence, pressure and rhythm sway.

The practice began within a therapeutic context and later moved into a situational daily drawing practice. Gestures emerged from sensation before they could be recognised or spoken. Drawing became a way to remain present within unknowing rather than force false coherence.

Since 2013, and daily from the late 2010s, I have kept ongoing records of this bilateral drawing practice. The drawings track shifts between body and environment, marking changes in fatigue, spasticity, attention, weather and internal state. They function as a way of managing immobility and sensory overload associated with complex trauma, and as a means of reorienting my body within place.

Working with both hands simultaneously interrupts dominant patterning. Neither hand leads by default. Over time, their differences have become legible. My non-dominant left hand is adept at breaking patterns, introducing variations and changes. My right hand sustains rhythm, repetition and continuity. When a drawing needs to shift, I allow the left to guide. When it needs to settle or hold, I let the right re-establish patterns. Agency moves between them rather than remaining fixed.

The drawings do not begin as images. They begin as movement and contact.

Images appear as a record of my body in relation to time, place and my internal state. I think of it as a topo-somatic record where bodily sensing and terrain are held together. The drawings register how a body passes through time rather than how it represents itself.

This method has remained active across many years, adapting to different materials, scales and conditions. It appears in graphite, ink, clay, pigment, textile, wood and digital layering. In some works it is visible as marks. In others it structures rhythm, pacing and composition beneath the surface.

Bilateral drawing underpins several bodies of work shown here, including Bilateral Clay Recordings, Bodies of Weather and Everyday Holobionts. While its outcomes change, the practice itself remains consistent and informs my whole practice.

This work remains ongoing…..

I have over ten years of nearly daily drawing; I intend to archive as much of that work as I can when time allows.