This is an 8-channel composition in response to the sketch, Froanna by Wyndham Lewis. Considering the lines colours, shapes and shading of the sketch this composition uses close-up microphone recordings of chalk on paper with blue noise and electronic sounds to transport the listener to an abstract interpretation of the emotive content of the work... a portrait of Lewis' wife, Froanna. Follow the gestural strokes of chalk on paper... What do you hear? What do you see?

... a perpetual gaze... 

... a clasped posture... 

... a wife who was hidden from view... 

... intensity...

... a sense of strain...

... an unfolding from the colour... blue...

Sketching Froanna was realised in the Electroacoustic Music Studios (BEAST) at the University of Birmingham between March and May 2019, with support from the Midlands3Cities Doctoral Training Partnership and AHRC.

This work was commissioned by The Barber Institute of Fine Arts for the #BarberLates event, Nocturnes: A Woman Refigured held on 14 May 2019.