Emily Manning-Mingle

During the last week I’ve been drawing mostly flowers, motivated by a curiosity which has little to do with either botany or aesthetics. I have been asking myself whether natural forms–a tree, a cloud, a river, a stone, a flower–can be looked at and perceived as messages. Messages–it goes without saying–which can never be verbalized, and are not particularly addressed to us. Is it possible to ‘read’ natural appearances as texts? For me there is nothing mystical in this exercise. It is a gestural exercise, whose aim is to respond to different rhythms and forms of energy, which I like to imagine as texts from a language which has not been given to us to read. Yet as I trace the text I physically identify with the thing I’m drawing and with the limitless, unknown mother tongue in which it is written.

Like a snake, my heart 
has shed its skin. I hold it here in my hand,
 full of honey and wounds.