legibility

From about 2003 - 2006, I was asking myself questions about the possibilities of communication in drawing. I was questioning the ability of clear "speech" through art and, in doing so, seemed to reify the doubt, making illegible work (about illegibility).
I'm realizing today that I have shifted away from those concerns and I hope that in turn my work has become more coherent. I've drifted from questions about communication with the landscape of memory to the landscape itself. I am still interested in the ways we "read" the environment, but in the new work, the answer is more certain. These are artifacts which depict the becoming of their own artifactness. Coring down under the surface, the conclusion is clear: the inevitable large-scale collapse and eventual renewal of the landscape (and of course the species within that landscape).
This work (through a kind of absence) concerns the interdependent nature of species and environment - figure and ground. There is a triple folding-in of character and landscape. The earth pigment drawings are figure on the ground of the wood panels, which are themselves figure on the ground of glass/paper/wall. But the earth pigment drawings are themselves also landscapes... grounds for absent (or more accurately - buried) figures.
This shift arises from two larger questions, one global (how to continue in the face of things) and one personal (how to find a voice, both in my work and in a larger community). Two questions I would like to return to later...