Collection N° 06
Ground, growth and weather — the parts of a place that were there before the building arrived.
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Nature enters this archive the way it enters a site survey — as the condition everything else has to answer to. These works give the ground, the plant life and the sky the same attention the buildings usually get, and in several pieces the building is reduced to a small white mark placed to prove the scale of everything around it.
The drawing method stays consistent. Terrain is set out in planes rather than in outlines, so a hillside is described by how it turns towards or away from the light. Vegetation is drawn as structure: a stand of tall plants has a rhythm and a spacing, and getting those right matters far more than getting individual leaves right.
Colour comes almost entirely from earth pigments — raw sienna, burnt umber, indigo, and the granulating greys that separate on damp paper and give volcanic ground its grain. Greens are used sparingly and never brightly, which is truer to the Atlantic islands than the postcards suggest.
These prints are the easiest in the archive to live with. They are quiet, tonal and largely abstract from a distance, which makes them well suited to bedrooms, dining rooms and any wall where a strong architectural line would be too assertive.
An architect reads a landscape as loads and surfaces: where water runs, where wind arrives, which slope will hold a wall. That reading shows up in the drawings as a preference for section over scenery — you are usually looking across a landform rather than into a view.
It also explains the restraint. There are no sunsets in this collection. The weather is ordinary, because ordinary weather is what a place actually looks like.
The plants that appear in these works are survivors: agave, tall coastal grasses, whatever grows in the gap between a wall and a road. They are drawn with the same line weight as masonry, which places them as equals in the composition rather than as decoration.
Paired with a coastal print, a nature study makes a calm two-piece grouping in a neutral, natural-material interior.
Ink and wash on paper · Fuerteventura, Canary Islands
Volcanic ground given the leading role, with the chapel reduced to a scale marker. Granulating earth pigments make this a landscape print that rewards a large format.
Ink and wash on paper · Atlantic coast
Plant life drawn with the same weight as the hull it surrounds — a study of what grows where nothing is maintained.
