As an inaugural recipient, I used my bursary to participate in an intense two-week ‘Drawing Marathon’ at the Royal Drawing School. During this experience, I developed my technical skills by drawing directly from nude models, sitters and performers across the span of approximately 60 hours. The resulting drawings, of which there are over 150, have since fed into my broader practice.
In my first self-produced solo exhibition, Drawing Breath showcases a series of selected life drawings. These were created at the Royal Drawing School in July 2019 as a direct result of the Emergence Bursary and exhibited with additional support from YVAN and Wykleand.
The Emergence Bursary – a collaboration between artist-network, Shape Arts and Disability Arts Online – sought to tackle isolation, low confidence and marginalisation of emerging disabled artists, actively pushing back against the lack of accessible opportunities in mainstream arts settings. This bursary could be spent in any way that each of the four receiving artists felt best supported the development of their own artistic practice.
