As I walk I draw

Walking a line for Line(s) of Enquiry (2023-2025)

As I walk I draw (Moving Breath) 

Words and marks made during seasonal walks along the Honeybourne Line inspired a drawing made from memory: of lines, places we paused, my sensory responses to whatever caught my eye. I walked the line back and forth, pen suspended, the gait of my pen on paper. Lines made by walking. I breathe. Moving breath. 

As I walk I draw (Tracklines) 

A spiral line. Words flow seasonally, entwining movement, observations, sounds and conversations. Rusty wire wound around the wheels of a burnt-out moped at the end of the Honeybourne Line is echoed in the form of the piece. The language of this line is specific both to this place at particular moments in time and to tracklines walked further afield. 

As I walk I draw 

As I draw I walk 

These works were made for Line(s) of Enquiry, a collaborative project between Hardwick Gallery (University of Gloucestershire) and Walking the Land. Over two years, from 2023, a group of us walked the Honeybourne Line in Cheltenham, a disused railway track, now a greenway, alongside other disused railway lines further afield. We walked during each changing of the seasons, exploring the numerous potential lines of enquiry presented by these tracks. The resulting artwork reflected the variety of interests, areas of focus, and ways of making, within the group.

In March 2025, we exhibited our works at Hardwick Gallery, situated besides a junction along the Honeybourne Line. We showed research and process works in the cabinets at Crush Hall, University of Gloucestershire, and ran a symposium with a day of panels linking Walking the Land artists, invited guest speakers where walking is a significant part of their practice, and University of Gloucestershire researchers from the Fine Art department and CCRI (Countryside & Community Research Institute). We also facilitated a sharing of our practice through creative walks at both the symposium and during the exhibition. Together these events provided an opportunity to share more widely, and discuss in greater depth, outcomes from the project. 

This post is a reflection on the works that I made for this project. If you’d like to see images of all the works in the exhibition and read more about the project, I’ve added some links and images at the end of this post.

It’s difficult to sum up a project that spans over a significant length of time but I’ve done my best to capture some of the key moments from the process of walking this line and how I made the two exhibition works, As I walk I draw (Moving Breath) and As I walk I draw (Tracklines).

Whilst meeting up with other Walking the Land artists to walk the Honeybourne Line, I drew as I walked, responding to whatever caught my eye – from unexpected encounters like a drop of rain falling from the underside of a bridge to the lines of wind between hedges at the end of the track.

I’ve developed a way of walking where I can draw whilst walking with others, both alone and in conversation. My pen or pencil catches marks and lines of fragments, of branches, the flight of a butterfly, snippets of overheard conversations. I use a tactile and sensory approach. I draw, make notes, collect words and sounds, take photos and videos. This way of drawing on the move enables me to grab bits of visual and sound information whilst still being part of the group.

For each seasonal walk, whether on the Honeybourne Line or elsewhere, we all used a linear concertina ‘sketchbook’ format, creating connections between our walking together as well as resulting in a set of works to display in the research cabinets at the exhibition.

Being outdoors and moving, helps me to absorb and navigate the world around me, as well as to process and visualise ideas for an artwork. My breathing shifts in relation to my environment, the slowness of my walking pace and taking in what is all around me. I can wander wherever my imagination leads me. The outcome is often abstract, sometimes related to the place I’m in, at other times a mix of places, remembered or imagined. During the walks I responded in the moment, leaving aside any pressure for potential ‘finished’ artwork outcomes. I find that to make finished works, I need to be alone to get lost in my creative bubble, my thoughts and imagination, and wander wherever my ideas lead me, with the possibility to become lost for hours in making.

As I walk and draw, I look up, down and all around, whilst simultaneously moving forwards. I turn my head, led by sounds or movements elsewhere. I may duck under a tree, change my pace, the ground under my feet can change my pace and gait.

These responses made whilst out walking become part of the story of a place or a journey and played a central part in the works that I created for Line(s) of Enquiry. 

The two works that I exhibited are a response to merging these walks into a continuous line. They are both specific to a time and a place but could easily also relate to other places, times, remembered, real and imagined. In making them, I am in my studio, walking in my imagination, making a drawing in response. 

Moving Breath draws on previous memories of walks along Honeybourne Line as well as the act of walking the line of paper whilst making the work. The traces of past walks mix in with the present. It was a way of mapping the walks in a way that I felt somehow represented both the Honeybourne Line, our pauses along it, conversations, the elements and memories and traces of the original subject matter of my drawings. Moving Breath is my remembered walks along this line, where we paused to gather together, underneath the bridge where I waited to catch rain drips falling from above, where the cat ran along a log by the stream and the wind caught my concertina sketchbook, tearing it in half. Each place is imagined and documented, mapped through lines and marks of my pen on paper. I walk up and down the line to make the drawing.

I created Tracklines from words collected during walks, in the order in which they occurred. The text is slightly obscured with the top and bottom of letters missing , becoming lines within a line, with hints of some kind of linear meaning. Fragments of it are visible, reflecting the way that words and conversations fade in and out on walks in public spaces. There are multiple ways that the spiral can be displayed; for this exhibition I chose a long low plinth to reflect the linear nature of the railway track, with its coiling recalling the wound wire on a burnt out moped at the end of the Honeybourne Line.

I often use this way of working from sketches and works made in situ, collected sounds and materials, brought back to the studio. This can be seen in works such as Tide, travelling in my imagination and memories from my studio inland to being on the coast, and being in the sea or walking along the seashore. As I draw, I feel the elements in a sensory way and create drawings that respond to this. Puddle Worlds also connected real and imagined places and elements through drawings made from a rainwater puddle. 

Test-pieces and the concertina sketchbooks that I made on walks along the Honeybourne Line were included in the research section of the exhibition, testing materials, ideas, and ways of working with text and image.

Walking together for this project was enriching in the many layered conversations and shared interests along the way. Being part of Walking the Land CIC (and since 2024, also a Co-Director, and one of the organisers for the Line(s) of Enquiry project) has led to friendships and a valuable peer support network. As we walk together, remotely and in-person, we find connections, and bounce ideas off each other, in a different way from if we were sitting indoors.

I have found that I enjoy creatively walking and generating projects together. Working as part of a group helps me to balance the tensions between the quiet and subtle way that I embed issues I feel passionately about in my artwork with the urgency of needing to address the climate crisis. Together we can come together around shared interests and hopefully have more impact. Walking the Land projects that I have been involved in, such as Fieldwalking (2024) and Watermarks (2021) have given me the space to make solitary works alongside being part of a group collaboration or project.

For many years I have been creating works around line, from Imagined Lines to Groundlines, mapping the line of a journey or the network of fields on a farm*. Traces and memories from working on Line(s) of Enquiry over a period of two years will no doubt be carried into future works. I’ve followed ancient chalk and flint tracks from Norfolk to Weymouth, the edgeline of an island, and a line of five rivers through Germany. Each journey adds layers of visible and invisible watery or geological lines of connection between people and places that go beyond borders or boundaries, giving me creative inspiration to further extend these lines through walking and drawing. They’ve become a way to map and understand the world, a visual language of communication.**

In making these works I am both deconstructing and reconstructing the environment of the Honeybourne Line. Preferring countryside to urban, I have tended to focus on nature rather than the tarmac, and on the more overgrown end section of the line. I am being led by what I have experienced on the walks, as well as leading it on a new walk, with the lines and marks of my pen, marking my choices.

Whilst I am interested in catching the essence or a memory of this place, I welcome its generic links to other places that I and others have walked, real or imagined.***

* Last year I walked and camped on a farm to make Fieldwalking which became part of an exhibition at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester and included the farmer’s flint collection alongside responses by four artists from Walking the Land. (ref. image of drawing on stone). 

** Read more on Groundlines and Puddle Worlds: Maps as records of real and imaginary worlds by Ruth Broadbent (in Living Maps Review, Issue 12, Spring 2022).

***Towards the end of this project, after making the large drawing, Moving Breath, I was also making work for Antennae, an upcoming Drawing Tube publication and online exhibition. I created a series of smaller connected drawings to walks I knew well and had walked over a period of time. More on this in a future post.

To read more about the exhibition and each work in it, read and download the catalogue here.

Background information and images from the exhibition on Walking the Land website here and here.

Exhibiting artists:

Zoë Ashbrook, Christina Bingle, Ruth Broadbent, Tamsin Grainger, Lucy Guenot, Ruth Illingworth, Richard Keating, Janette Kerr, Kate McMahon-Parkes, Caroline Morris, Valerie Coffin Price, Amanda Steer, Nik Taylor, Susie Walker 

Line(s) of Enquiry exhibition at Hardwick Gallery, Cheltenham (UK), 3 – 27 March 2025

Line(s) of Enquiry symposium at University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, 21 March 2025

Line(s) of Enquiry symposium and exhibition (publicity image on poster by Richard Keating)