About

This blog starting in 2007 as a form of communication during my adventure art travels. Now it is a mix of posts on running and art. Below is my original “about” post which has now evolved into a much broader theme.

 

Tracing Nature is a drawing and print project that visually translates the physical and visceral experience of hiking remote landscapes and marathon training.

Tracing Nature originates in the solitude of nature, isolated from urban areas, in diverse geographical locations. My primary working method, creating drawings on paper with water media, reflect my observations of nature and record, via mark-making, my direct physical experiences of wilderness travel in remote landscapes. My drawings document the changing weather, the sounds of nature, the isolation, and the singular experience of observing time through changes in environment. The first of these locations was a winter residency at the Cape Cod National Seashore’s C-Scape Beach Shack where I lived December 2007 through January 2008 in a primitive shack on the Atlantic Ocean without electricity, running water, cell or wireless service. My second location was Lake St. Clair, Tasmania where I lived for 2 months in a ranger’s cottage with the closest grocery store a two-day trip away.

My work flows from my interaction with the land and the push of my physical body into heighten fitness levels.  The drawings become visual maps specific to each region: abstract, intuitive time lines that mark a spatial journey of memory and change. The topographical character of my work, both imagined and reflecting nature evolves from my subconscious as I transform two-dimensional space on the paper with the memory of movement through time and space. My body holds the legacy of physical experience that I then decode in my artwork to explore the notion of transience, chance, and difference.

Grounded in traditions of performance walking, such as Marina Abramovic and Ulay’s “Great Wall Walk” or Richard Long’s walking landscape work, my artwork is shaped by the space that I pass through. Like Abramovic and Ulay, I test my boundaries in the face of danger, pain, pleasure, and reward by traveling isolated landscapes and living outdoors. These events become private collections of physical memory that I translate into tangible objects.

My project takes an experimental approach to studio production by creating a transitory wilderness studio that invites viewers to observe my daily living and art production posted writings and digital photographs. The blog is possible through a satellite terminal provided by my corporate sponsor Galaxy 1 communications in the Netherlands.

The completed two year project will result in a portfolio of drawings, photographs both digital and large format and an editioned portfolio of etchings that will be exhibited internationally.

©Hilary Lorenz 2007