Drawing Practice

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My drawing is founded on notebooks. They are tools for documentation and places to dream graphically. I carry one to record experience, to examine and understand the stuff of the world. And, at home and in the studio, they allow for invention, composition and storage as ideas mature or fade.

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Larger drawings carried out in the studio blend together observation and imagination. Falling into thematic groups, they are materially and compositionally carefully planned to communicate speculative ideas and images. For example, the drawings that make up Flood Story and Retreat to Caves! play out themes of environmental and social change, most recently speculative fiction of the effect of global warming and rising sea levels.

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Each sequence is made with a different approach, material, surface and scale. Staying with drawing but moving between scale, media and substrate aims to achieve the best fit between the specific idea and image and the given characteristics of the materials, it also offers visual variety to the viewer. Some sets of drawings have been continuing for over a decade. For example, each Flood Story drawing completed seems to suggest the next iteration. Others, such as Crowds and Power were planned and completed over 12 months as a ‘closed’ composition.

 

Individual drawings from every series have been exhibited, predominantly in survey shows and group exhibitions. A drawing from Crowds and Power was included in Drawing Inspiration, a 2006 survey of contemporary British drawing at Abbott Hall Kendal and shortlisted for the 2007 Jerwood Drawing Prize, as was one from the Raft series in 2015. A group of Retreat to Caves! were exhibited in a 2013 survey of British drawing at Salisbury Art Centre. In 2016 a Cave drawing was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize.  Drawings from Flood Story were exhibited in a 2017 solo show at Drawing Projects UK, recently one was awarded second prize at the 2019 Wales Contemporary and another shortlisted for the 2020 New Light prize. Another won first prize in the 2023 Wales Biennale, aa further one was in the 2023 Scottish Landscape Award and recently one titled One Day Someone will Scuba Dive Over Your House was selected for the Royal Scottish Academy 2024 exhibition in Edinburgh.

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Academic Position 

Senior Lecturer in Drawing at  Lancaster University

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Education

1990-91             Fulbright Scholarship to Purdue University USA

1981-84             Royal College of Art, MA Painting

1977-80            Wolverhampton Polytechnic, BA (Hons) Fine Art

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Exhibitions

Solo shows

2024                 One Day Someone Will Scuba Dive Over Your House, Ruskin Museum, Brantwood, Coniston, Cumbria.

2017                 Flood Story, Drawing Projects U.K Trowbridge Wiltshire.

2010                 Jenolan Caves, Center for Drawing. The National Art School, Sydney, N.S.W. Australia.

2000               Deluge of Human Indifference,  Midlands Art Centre, Birmingham, U.K

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Group shows

2024                  STILL/WATERS/RUN/DEEP, TIDESPACE, Kirkcudbright, Scotland

2024                Royal Scottish Academy Exhibition 2024, Edinburgh

2023                  Scottish Landscape Awards, The Art Centre, Edinburgh, Scotland

2023                  Wales Biennale, Waterfront Gallery, Milford Haven, Wales

2020                  New Light, shortlisted for this prize for art from Northern England. Scarborough Art Gallery 2020, touring in 2021 to Tullie                                        House Art Gallery, Carlisle, The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle and Bankside Art Gallery, London

2019                   Fully Awake 0.5, curated by Ian Hartshorne. Freelands Foundation, London

2019                   Wales Contemporary, Prizewinner. Exhibited Waterside Gallery, Milford Haven & Mall Galleries London

2018                   Collective and Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice, the International Project Space at Birmingham College of                                              Art & Design

2017                 For Space, British artists engaged with place, site and space. Paper, Manchester UK.

2015/16           Jerwood Drawing Prize,  Jerwood Space, London & touring in the UK

2014                 Paper, Table, Wall and After. University of Northumbria & Taiwan University

2013                 SKETCH 2013.  Selection of contemporary artist’s sketchbooks. Rabley Drawing Centre, Marlborough, UK.

2013                 Open Drawing 2013, Salisbury Arts Centre. British drawing selected by Stephen Farthing

2011                 SKETCH 2011.  Selection of contemporary artist’s sketchbooks. Rabley Drawing Centre, Marlborough, UK.

2011                 The Moment of Privacy Has Passed. Usher Gallery, Lincoln

2009                 Contemporary Drawings, Recent acquisitions, Leighton Room, V & A Museum. London

2006-8             Drawing Breath: A Selection to Mark Ten Years of the Jerwood Drawing Prize. Touring internationally 

2006                 Drawing Inspiration, Contemporary British Drawing . Abbot Hall Museum, Kendal, Cumbria

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Writing 

Monograph

2020              Casey, S. and Davies, G, 'Drawing Investigations: Graphic Investigations in Science, Culture and Environment'. Published by               Bloomsbury July 2020

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Journal Articles

2016              Casey, S. & Davies G, ‘Drawing as Babel Fish’, International Journal of Illustration, (London: Intellect). ISSN: 20520204 (Print)       ISSN: 20520212 (Online) 

2015               Davies, G. and Casey, S. ‘Lines of Engagement: Drawing Walking Tracking’, Journal of Visual Arts Practice

2014               Casey, S. and Davies, G. ‘A Garland of Thoughts: Ruskin and Contemporary Site/ Sight Sensitive Drawing’ in TRACEY the Journal of Drawing Research March 2014)

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Book Chapters

2018                Casey, S. and Davies, G, ‘Drawing and the Mute, Speaking through Drawing’, in Gorill, H (ed.) Collective and Collaborative Drawing in Contemporary Practice (Cambridge Scholars) (forthcoming)

2017               Casey, S. & Davies G., ‘Drawn away from Vision’ in Heywood, I (ed.) The Senses in Art and Design’ (London: Bloomsbury)

 

Conference Papers

2016                Casey, S. and Davies, G, ‘Drawing and the Depictive Turn in Science’, European Association for the Study of Science and Technology, Barcelona, 3rd September 2016.

2015                 Casey, S. and Davies, G, ‘Shared Sensibilities: Drawing in partnership with other fields of enquiry’ at Drawing Research Network Conference 2015 (Coventry: Coventry University)  4th December 2015

2015                 Casey, S. and Davies, G,’ Drawing Sensing Sighting Sounding’, American Association of Geographers Conference, Chicago

 

Awards & Residencies

2023               First Prize in the Wales Biennale.

2019             Visiting Professor at The College of Arts, National Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan

2010                Artist in Residence at the National Art School, Sydney, N.S.W. Australia

2004                AHRB  Award, to research contemporary artists’ notebooks             

1999                AHRB Research Leave Award, 9 months

1990-1             Fulbright Scholarship, Visiting Artist, Purdue University, USA

1987-8             Artist in Residence at Durham Cathedral

1985                 Study period at The RCA Venice Studio

1984                The John Minton Prize for Figurative Painting

1983                 Royal College of Art scholarship to the International Cite des Arts, Paris

1981                 The Royal College of Art Drawing Prize