Drawing Water, from puddles to rivers and sea

UK River Summit 2025

I’m delighted to be exhibiting at the UK River Summit on Tuesday 8 July. It is described as a day of “rivers, stories, action, and impact” and will begin with creative performances by the River Wandle. The summit will bring together CEOs, government ministers, scientists, campaigners, and community groups in genuine dialogue about protecting our waterways. Art will weave throughout the day. I really like the way that this is described as: 

“Art reaches people in ways that data alone cannot, creating emotional connections that inspire action and remind us of the joy that healthy rivers bring to our lives.”

I swim in rivers whenever I can with the River Thames and Avon being my nearest. I walk riverside paths, especially my local river, the Cherwell. I also kayak in gentle water, loving the way that life slows down to the speed of the flow, with the chance to silently glide amongst kingfishers and voles. Like so many, I am horrified by the way that rivers and sea in the UK have been allowed to become so polluted and jumped at the chance to use my art to be part of a solutions-finding event that seeks action and brings together such a wide range of people to make this happen. Although my art is often made in a solitary way, I seek out ways to make it part of conversations and actions with others to highlight and bring about care for our environment. I also bring these issues into the subject matter and way that I teach, from drawing classes to the walk.draw events and workshops that I run. 

Water features a lot in my work with the influence of spending so much time by or in water seeping into my artwork, from puddles to rivers and sea, rain, snow and hail storms. In thinking about works to bring with me for the summit, I decided to select a range of watery works to reflect the interconnections between water in all its forms, with one impacting on another, and with edges blurring between land and rivers, rain, mist, and atmosphere. 

I’m currently reading The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer, who I am looking forward to hearing speak at the festival. Reading about the way she links rain running down tree bark to rivers and groundwater reflects my thinking behind my drawings of rain lines and marks on the bark of beech trees. Her book is lovely if you’re looking for a summer read in the coming weeks. In my book pile waiting to be read next is Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? and David Attenborough’s Ocean. I’ve added a few watery reading and listening links from recent months at the end of this post.

The following is a copy of the exhibition info that I will bring with me to the summit. With such a packed programme of wonderful activities and fascinating panels, there is unlikely to be much time for reading so I’ve added it here for reference. It summarises a lot of works written about elsewhere on my website into one place. I’m still working with rivers and water so this is just a momentary pause, an eddy in the flow.

Exhibition Statement for the UK River Summit 2025

For this exhibition I have selected works with a connection to water, some directly in response to rivers, others with a watery connection. Many of these works have come about through walking.

Tide began by spending time with rivers and then over time, the sea. It records trace memories of the movement of sea water and sand at the water’s edge, an elemental dance of sand and pen on paper. Through its making I travel in my imagination from grains of sand to the sea, mapping, remembering, imagining through this tactile engagement with the elements.

Puddle Worlds, made in my garden during lockdown, repeatedly maps a rainwater puddle. They led me to travel in my imagination from a small garden puddle to a landscape of possibilities and a wider elemental exploration of place, land and sea, earth and water. As I tried to contain, trace around and rescue inky edges from disappearing into the page, an imaginary world appeared. Mapping the same area repeatedly over a period of time, the boundaries and borders in each Puddle World drawing shifted, hinting at the impact of political and climate change.

Cloud Puddles, a grid of cloud-like abstracts, was inspired by five drawings that came about through playing with materials and drawing in the rain. Through the process of making, I find in these liquid worlds, echoes of and connections between ground, earth, air and water.

Five Rivers Line drawings were made whilst following a line of five connecting rivers in Germany, making pencil rubbings of the ground along the way. Following the line of the Rhine and crossing the North Sea by ferry back home extended the lines connecting this island with neighbouring Europe, highlighting our watery and geological connections. Five Rivers Line is part of a wider body of artwork, Groundlines, including other journeys journeys such as A Line Across England, following a line of chalk and flint ancient tracks from Norfolk to Weymouth, and a circular coastline journey for An Island Line.

The more recently mapped five rivers line is part of a new work, an elemental journey of earth and water, attempting to capture both real and imagined worlds, stories and histories.

Rain-lines (beech) maps marks made by rainwater running down the bark of beech tree trunks. Walking through woodland in Gloucestershire I paused to record these traces of water. They remind me of other waterways, of rivers of water, connecting sky, air and ground as water finds its way around our planet.

Fe-Lines ink drawings are made using my cats’ shed whiskers. Being largely water-resistant, the drawn lines are barely visible. Visually reminiscent of a horizon line, I find myself seeing the tideline and sea meeting sky as the whiskers and ink navigate the surface and edges of the paper.

Walking a Line: Encounters Through Drawing was made between riverside and woodland, drawing as I walk, my pencil tracking and tracing sounds, movement and the rhythm of walking. Pausing to draw birdsong, the sounds of leaves and water, the movement of a branch, flight of a butterfly, attempting to geolocate its source on the page. In search of sensory responses and a visual mapping of my surroundings, I am taking into account layers of history and biodiversity whilst responding to unexpected and serendipitous encounters and whatever catches my eye: a visual response to what I see and hear whilst moving. The limestone underfoot takes me back into deep time, whilst the younger trees growing out of the earth ground me in the present. The river here is not far from the source. Downstream it joins the River Thames. The nearby canal is part of a wider network of inter-connecting waterways that criss-cross the country. This park is also a flood zone for the town including temporary lakes as the river edges blur and water spills over. As I walked I was ‘mapping’ what I saw, sometimes looking at the paper as I drew, other times caught up in what I had seen. I noted down words and observations along the way. 

As I walk, I draw

Between riverside and woodland

Begin at weir, rushing water

Bubbles

Nettles wave in gentle breeze

Brambles dance

Leaves and branches sway

Twigs float by

Petals scatter on ground

Dandelion clocks disperse

Birds fly by

Perch overhead

Sound of traffic

Of trains

Of meadow being mown

The occasional passer-by

Chiffchaff, robin, long-tailed tit

Magpie, blue tit, robin

Splashes of yellow, white, purple

Mostly green

End where river ripples

(text to accompany drawing and video, Walking a Line: Encounters Through Drawing, 2024)

The natural materials displayed were found whilst walking and swimming in the UK and France. They each have a story and in some way reflect or are connected to my creative process.

I enjoy the making, the repetition, the simplicity of a repeated mark or action, developed slowly over time. During this time I feel calm with time to be quiet, to think and reflect, listen to symposiums and stories, often related to the subject-matter that I am drawing. I begin to find answers to what I am making and why. These additional layers of meaning and the process of making become quietly embedded within the work and its outcome. 

A physical and material engagement with the ground, visually mapping traces and stories of earth and water, often leads me to wander in my imagination into and across landscapes and journeys, and tune into wider connections with geology, history, politics, culture and language, and how we tell stories and construct meanings. The abstract nature of these works hopefully also encourage viewers to interpret them in their own way, finding their thoughts carried somewhere, travelling in their imagination.

The film, Tide, that accompanies the drawing can be viewed here.

The film, Walking a Line, that accompanies the drawing and text can be viewed here.

Ruth Broadbent is an artist and educator, based in the UK. Her creative practice is inspired by nature and ecology, lines of landscape, and line in drawing and sculpture.The process of walking and movement is central to the way that she creatively responds to place. Recent works explore ground and water, from a material engagement with the surface of the ground and its multi-layered stories, to responses to seas, rivers, rainwater puddles, hail and snow. Ruth exhibits her work in the UK and internationally, was selected for Drawing Correspondence, GROW (2021), Reading Water: A Contemplative Ecology of the Rivers Nile and Thames (British Council COP27, 2022), 4WCoP (2022-24), and shortlisted for the Marŝarto Award for walking art (2024). She teaches in post-compulsory education and creates events for organisations and festivals. She is a member of drawing, walking and ecology artist networks, including hyphae drawing collective, the founder of walk.draw, Museum of Walking (Co-Creator), and a Co-Director of Walking the Land CIC.

Tide

Puddle Worlds

Cloud Puddles

Five Rivers Line 

Rain-lines (beech) 

Fe-Lines

Walking a Line: Encounters Through Drawing 

As I walk I draw

(Fool’s) Gold – L’Isle and Lac d’Enchanet

Riverside stone – River Stour

Join us at the UK River Summit – July 8th, Morden Hall

The UK’s unique cross-sector river conservation gathering brings together voices that rarely share the same platform – water company CEOs, government ministers, scientists, campaigners, and community groups in genuine dialogue about protecting our waterways.

This independent space creates real collaboration where Emma Hardy MP (Minister for Water) sits alongside Ofwat’s CEO, where practical conservation meets policy-making, and where partnerships that drive change are born.

From water quality monitoring demonstrations to panels on agriculture, finance, and human behaviour in conservation – plus art exhibitions and creative performances woven throughout the day. Art reaches people in ways that data alone cannot, creating emotional connections that inspire action and remind us of the joy that healthy rivers bring to our lives.

July 8th, 9am-6pm, Morden Hall, London

Info and book tickets here

Some water-inspired listening and reading

Way too many books on water to list them all, so here are a few that I’ve referred to in recent months:

The Flow: Rivers, Water and Wildness by Amy-Jane Beer

Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane 

(also interview with Macfarlane on Emergence Magazine podcast – listen here)

Ocean by David Attenborough

Braiding Sweetgrass (‘Witness to the rain’ chapter) by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson talking about her book, Theory of Water, on Between the Covers podcast – listen here

Elegy for a River by Tom Moorhouse

Drawing Water: Drawing as a Mechanism for Exploration by Tania Kovats