The Charcoal Odes is a series of large-scale, performative charcoal drawings made through traces, fragments, and imprints of my own form. Each work was filmed not just to document the outcome but to highlight the act of drawing as something embodied, durational, and alive.

As the series unfolded, my focus shifted from image to process. Tracing and mark making became ways of expressing what I couldn’t say, connecting movement with material and control with the unpredictability of charcoal. The process became a space to feel, to release, and to transform.

Each title in the series references an ode by the English poet John Keats (1795-1821), whose reflections on beauty, impermanence, and the intensity of emotion mirror the physical and internal states I navigate through movement and mark-making.

Ode on Melancholy

2024, Charcoal on paper, 110" x 24" x 8"

Side View

Ode on Melancholy

2024, Charcoal on paper, 110" x 24" x 8", video, 04:10 min.

Ode to a Nightingale

2024, Charcoal on paper, 106" x 102"

Detail

Ode to a Nightingale

2024, Charcoal on paper, 106" x 102", 0:21 excerpt from 4-minute film, full version available upon request.