I wanted to confront what I believe the nature of line drawing or mark-making is in my own practice. I have always been a keen drawer and illustrator, and the simple pencil-drawn line or outline excites me the most. I have been set in my own way of drawing for a very long time, and during my study at the Royal College of Art I had a practice predominantly focused on pencil-drawn works. I was so familiar with the tools and the routines. When I was first presented with an opportunity to learn how to use domestic sewing machines, I thought this could be an interesting new toy to play with and a way to break away from habits. It turned out I didn't have to walk away from the drawing routines I was familiar with. I ended up trying really hard to reenact my drawing routines with the sewing machine, and realised that I was dealing with a reverse drawing movement. I imagined the sheet of fabric as a sheet of paper, the sewing machine needle as a pencil. For me, moving the fabric to meet the needle to make marks is like trying to create drawn lines by constantly moving the paper underneath a motionless pencil.

This revelation provided me with a method of approaching it as a translation between my intentions and the limitations of the tools. I guess 'embroidery-drawing' is really about presenting myself with an exciting challenge to continue my passion for drawing. And this challenge has continued as the centre of my practice since 2017.

I think all the ridiculous parts, really - for example, the Houses of Parliament or the long lorry queues at Dover.

I really enjoy it when they realise that the work is composed of stitches rather than paint. I like to do this subtle teasing of how we assume an image or painting ought to be created, and subversion is a method I have enjoyed using since I was a student at the Royal College of Art in 2014. I think the subversion makes us question and reevaluate the familiarity we rely on, and that moment of doubt refreshes our perspectives and invites us to experience the work more intently.

I think it was the earlier discussions I had with my European and British peers after the referendum. The emotions were high, and I felt an urge to make something elaborate that was both caring and absurd. I basically felt like summoning all the rabbit characters from British pop culture, literature, or tales to show up in solidarity.

I guess metal surprised me the most when I first started working with it. It’s a very forgiving material. When I first tried to weld two metal bars together - running the torch with a metal wire to melt and join the two workpieces - it resembled sewing two pieces of fabric together with a thread. When I used the angle grinder to polish the surface, the little marks left behind resembled the drawing and stitching marks I would make. I found it surprisingly satisfying to discover the similarity between sewing and welding, and how both bring a drawing quality that I really appreciate.

I wouldn't say there is one single stitched line that's specifically difficult, haha - but I remember when I was working on a piece for Pocket Fever, Mirror; I wanted to do an enactment similar to how you would work with a medium-sized brush over an area on canvas in an instant. My way of approaching this was to run several long stitches over an area of fabric, running them very swiftly to imitate the movement of spreading paint. But it was difficult to operate the sewing machine and drag the fabric quickly enough to be bold, while at the same time having to "calculate" where each small mark would go to form those bigger "spontaneous" strokes. My heart raced during the process; there was such excitement. I felt physically drained afterwards - I almost felt like I'd just sprinted.

I think the criticality comes from the subject matter itself and how I position my intention within the imagery or their grouping as a whole. And the lighthearted sense would come from the joyful nature of the colour scheme, materials, and the illustrative motifs within the works. They both sound a bit surface-level, and that's where I initially see their value, and I hope viewers enjoy the combination or partnership as they take them in gradually.

At the moment, I feel that Pocket Fever has probably brought a lot of reflection on how I understand my practice. I feel there's a portal I stepped into when I finished the project, and that is leading me to the next inquiry in my practice.

I think that when thinking about illustration as a discipline and beyond the traditional definitions, there’s so much room to talk about its own autonomy and possibilities. What’s interesting about being one of the advisors to the new Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration is that because the centre is undergoing a long transition period from being previously known as the House of Illustration in King’s Cross, London, it is looking at its local versus national impacts on how the organisation addresses the subject and how it will communicate it to its old and new audiences, as well as to the local community around its new permanent site, which is due to open this year. The conversations I was lucky to be part of were about decisions and thoughts around artistic direction. Often I would walk away from these conversations and rethink my roles as practitioner, artist, educator, and audience member. It reminds me that there is a vast range of interests among different sectors and people who are equally keen on understanding the past and future of illustration as I am. That gives me some revelations about what illustration could be in a grander scheme—things I wouldn’t ordinarily think about in my studio routines.

Illustration to me, much like the craft side of my practice, isn’t often given enough critical appreciation considering there’s that hierarchy in the art world, especially compared to fine art oil painting. (This is another reason I enjoy teasing the painting-like visual effects in my stitched imagery.) The traditional understanding of both illustration and craft as practices is ‘to serve’—often to be purposeful or functional. But I think illustration has its own agency beyond that legacy. Some elements can be taken apart and reinvented in contexts outside their normal realm and expanded.

That said, I still very much appreciate its older quality that differs from fine art—that there’s more intention behind the imagery to serve its audience, or a stronger desire to bring viewers closer to a certain place. I think that is what I like to work on in the expanded practice, which encompasses illustrative language in the fine art context, because it seems to care more and have more ‘warmth’. It appealed to me when I first introduced my old childhood soft toy figure into my fine art drawing work as a familiar and friendly presence—a longing for me to find comfort in connecting to reality and to be able to actively care for and engage with it. For my comfort, it’s probably less about thinking of illustration versus fine art, and more that I wonder if I could continue working between the boundaries and offer something exciting to both fields.

It might come across as feeling intimidated, distanced, lost, idle, and sheltered in one's own mind.

At the moment, I view ‘expanded-drawing’ as stitching lines - as movement, testimony, and an act of making drawing marks. My recent exploration concerns the language and materiality that contain the stitched imagery, and how the integrity of the work shifts from two-dimensional to three-dimensional capacity. I also want to think about that knowledge and understanding beyond stitching and fabric, and what it means to question my ‘expanded-drawing’ practice in terms of volume, presence, weight, and space.

I hope that, when people look at my work over time, they will find curiosity and enthusiasm in my various quests to find that answer. The excitement arises from the material exploration, the imitation of acts, and the reimagining of the promise of craft. I also feel that people might view my practice as striving to make sense of ‘expanded-drawing’ for myself, and that somehow that effort itself becomes the point of departure for something else.