Charcoals

In this charcoal series, I venture into the liminal realms where presence is felt, not always seen, a space where consciousness hovers just beyond the delineated edge of form. Each mark, haze, and whisper of charcoal becomes a vessel for an unembodied awareness, that delicate point where the ethereal begins to manifest as matter.

Charcoal’s unique materiality, its soft edges, and its smoky diffusion across the page mirror the fleeting nature of thought and breath. These drawings do not insist on clarity; instead, they linger in moments of emergence, like dawn breaking through mist. Here, consciousness is not yet fully shaped but is sensed, sensed as if before language, arousal, or coherent thought.

The process is intuitive: marks build and recede, lines blur, layers reveal themselves, then dissolve. In this dialog between the hand and the medium, I surrender to the charcoal’s own will, allowing movement, pressure, and space to guide a transformation from formless to formed, from intention to suggestion.

The imagery often evokes cloudscape, vapor, or drifting particles of light, forms that hover between visibility and dissolution. These motifs stand as metaphors for consciousness as the primal ground: not a product of physical being, but the wellspring from which all being arises. In these drawings, the material is not shaped by thought; it emerges within awareness, as if thought were a ripple in the field of consciousness itself.

These charcoals are quiet meditations, invitations to pause in the space before definition. They ask: What does it mean to perceive a presence that has not taken shape? How does awareness exist when not bound by form?

Through this series, I seek to reawaken the viewer to the unknown within, to the moment just before form congeals, where consciousness breathes through line and shadow, and where presence remains both manifest and elusive.