WE MADE LINES IN THE EARTH

We Made Lines in the Earth is a new series of work started in 2022. The series brings a psychological lens to our human-managed landscapes. Thin watery paint washes across 12mm plywood. A laser is programmed to trace and engrave satellite imagery of human interventions in the landscape. The plywood is sanded to reveal the archaeology of the wood’s industrial production process. Layers of information emerge like historic earthworks in a drought. The image is further worn where geographic data tells us the environment is under pressure from grazing and deforestation. 

The series was conceived during a journey across, and over, America. The giant agricultural circles captured by the photographer Emmit Gowin revealed themselves as the fertile Texan planes transitioned to the increasingly parched new Mexico desert. Mile long rectangular fields battled with river beds and encroaching dust from the barren hills.

The resulting artefact hints at being a worn out map of an ancient civilisation. Paradoxically it represents a new form of contemporary landscape painting, hewn from artificial and natural materials, to reflect the times we now live in.

The first two artworks in this series, Murcia I and Murcia II, were exhibited as part of the Reimagining Joya exhibition which took place at Thames-Side Studios Gallery 26 Aug - 11 Sept. The two artworks evoked a series of psychogeographic walks from a residency that Stephen participated in at Joya: AiR in Southern Spain in 2017. Stephen worked closely with Professor Mark Mulligan from the Geography Department of King’s College London to consider different types of geospatial data available for the region.