We went back to the basics of making a line on a surface. Melanie Johnson, Rebecca Lyne and Elina Cerla looked at how drawing, thinking and gesture come together as one of the most primeval and immediate while also deeply layered forms of meaning-making.

There is nothing simpler than a monochrome mark on a surface, and yet this simplicity is profoundly deceptive. The essential act of mark-making can come to embody deep meaning and complexity which is made even more remarkable when the simplicity of the foundational gesture sits as a constant reminder on the surface, free of superfluity. Melanie Johnson and Rebecca Lyne, who have made drawing a central tenet of their practices, joined Elina Cerla to exchange ideas on how drawing can be understood as a direct bridge between the agency of the maker and the agency of the viewer, and consequently privileged as an embodied artform that straddles different ages across time. How are drawing and thinking so deeply connected? We looked at how drawing creates a direct shortcut between represented, surface, eye, hand and mind all the way back to the mind of the viewer. The process becomes a constant layering of decisions made that leave their trace.