This is probably the final piece created for 2015, a hypnotic state, for a client in the US.

The piece returns to a theme of shattered glass that I used in the Inkd Gallery exhibition Fragile a number of years back – I am fascinated by optics and also how best to convey them in this medium.  The thing about drawing glass is that it has very little form or shape itself.  It’s interesting, the way in which it displaces the things round it.

I’m excited about expanding the palette with a new range of calligraphy inks with a more intense colour base too and I discovered a number of new techniques working this new commission – one of which was to enhance the immediate and visceral graphite lines by tracing over them deliberately with fountain pen.  There is something about the contrast of the two marks together on the page that I find really exciting, one is the chaos of the free line that comes from the subconscious, and the second is the very deliberate line, that follows the same path but in a different way.  There is a repetition about the process but also a contrast in the approach, and for me it really helps draw attention and give importance to the parts of the work that are more spontaneous and automatic.