My newest drawings are portraits of family members and myself that that use dust as a medium.  Dust Drawings are meditations on time and mortality. They are depictions of our bodies created from our actual shed bodies, trying to make permanent what is temporary and cast off. These drawings are based on graphite sketches done directly from life. I then work on a translucent sheet of Mylar-like substrate with the graphite sketch underneath as a temporary guide. Dust is applied through a sieve, and I subtract dust using Q-tips and brushes, and re-applying veils of dust, fixing the dust to the surface of the picture plane with mists of distant fixative.  The finished drawings are delicate, ephemeral, their images barely defined, in essence made of our bodies’ shed skin, Memento Mori.

The Shower Drain drawings are a series of weekly drawings where I used found  "sill lives" of what I removed from the shower drain, marking time with the varied patterns. 

 

Dust Drawings

Dust on Dura-Lar, 2017-18

Dust Drawings

Shower Drain Drawings

Silverpoint on Prepared Ground, 2018-19

Suzanne Proulx