Folding Into Blue
Some drawings arrive quickly. Others take years to understand.
Folding Into Blue began during a life drawing session while I was living in Glasgow. At the time, it was simply one drawing among many — a quick response to a model resting on a striped bed. At the end of the session, I filed it away with dozens of other life drawings, and for almost three years I barely thought about it again.
Only after moving to Copenhagen did I return to it. By then, enough time had passed for me to stop looking at it as a life drawing and start seeing it as something else entirely.
From Observation to Memory
When I first looked at the drawing again, it wasn't the figure that caught my attention. It was the space surrounding her.
The bed no longer behaved like a real bed. Its perspective bent, the mattress seemed to tilt, and the blue stripes slowly stopped feeling like fabric. They became more like an emotional atmosphere surrounding the body.
That shift happened while I was working, almost without my noticing it. I wasn't interested in correcting the drawing or making it more realistic. Instead, I wanted the room itself to respond to the figure's emotional state, allowing the space to become psychological rather than merely descriptive.
Like many of my drawings, what had begun as observation slowly passed through memory. The original pose remained, but everything around it started to change.
Blue as Emotional Space
The curled posture became, over time, the emotional centre of the drawing.
There is something deeply human about the instinct to fold into ourselves. It can suggest protection, exhaustion, intimacy or withdrawal, sometimes all at once. The figure hides from the viewer while simultaneously revealing vulnerability. That contradiction interested me far more than any literal narrative.
Blue also crept in on its own. It wasn't something I consciously planned from the beginning. As I kept working, the colour took over the drawing bit by bit until it felt less like colour and more like atmosphere.
It is not a peaceful blue. It carries silence, distance, memory and introspection. Against it, the warmth of the skin feels fragile, almost dissolving into the surrounding space.
A Drawing That Needed Time
Years later, while visiting the Matisse exhibition in Barcelona, I found myself returning again and again to two paintings by Pierre Bonnard. Long after leaving the museum, those quiet domestic interiors stayed with me.
What fascinates me about Bonnard is not simply his use of colour, but the way ordinary rooms become emotional spaces. Perspective slips almost unnoticed, colour carries psychological weight, and everyday life becomes quietly strange.
Looking back, I realised that Folding Into Blue was searching for something similar, although through my own visual language.
I don't think this drawing could have been finished in Glasgow. It needed those years of distance. Sometimes a drawing has to wait until you've changed enough to understand what it was trying to become.
What began as a quick life drawing slowly transformed into something much more personal: a reflection on withdrawal, tenderness, solitude and the strange comfort of disappearing into colour.
Further Reading
If you enjoyed reading about the making of Folding Into Blue, you may also like:
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