Charles Worvill and Sarah Johnston – Visual Conversations

For those who have been following this thread, this is the third of our commentaries on the theme of collaboration. To date we have reported on our response to Igor Stravinsky’s 1913 ballet score, The Rite of Spring which involved our exchanging and developing a single drawing and more recently, how we collaborated simultaneously but remotely to create a drawing using an interactive digital whiteboard. 

Reflecting on what we had achieved so far, we concluded that we would return to analogue drawing for our next collaboration. This avoided having to organise a mutually convenient time to meet online, allowing greater freedom to work at our own speed than when we had worked using the dialogical approach with the interactive whiteboard.

Our only agreed parameters were that each drawing would be 21 x 21 cm square and that we would respond to the other’s drawing once it was uploaded into a Padlet where we could reflect on our drawing in text. This meant there was no postage cost involved or reliance on the vagaries of the postal system. The downside was we didn’t get to see one another’s drawings first hand.

With no guiding theme or agreed visual language, possibilities and a free-flow approach opened. Some drawings elicited a more direct response to the previous image whereas others were used as a provocation to forge a different take. 

In some instances, a drawing prompted a relatively direct response to the preceding image. Particular forms, marks, shapes or visual motifs were carried forward, echoed or subtly transformed, creating a sense of continuity between the two drawings. In other cases, the previous drawing acted more as a provocation to which to take an alternative approach. We found that rather than responding literally, the image might spark an association, memory or visual idea that led somewhere more unexpected. Nonetheless, foliage and flora came to dominate the drawings, appearing in various forms and degrees of abstraction.

What began as a simple exchange of drawings became an exploration of how one artist’s visual decisions might influence, redirect or provoke another’s. The process wasn’t a conversation in the conventional sense but a sequence of visual encounters, each drawing carrying traces of what had come before while opening up new possibilities for what might come next. In this way, the collaboration became less about producing a single, unified outcome and more about observing how ideas evolve when they are passed back and forth between two artists, across time and distance.

After completing a total of thirty drawings, we brought the project to a close by presenting the fruits of our labour in an online zine, bringing together our drawings and accompanying textual explanations. Click here or on the image below to view our collaboration.