Hallo dear Sketchbook friends,

Here I'm sharing another page from this journey-art-book, which I created during a bicycle-train-ferry adventure from Scotland to Slovenia in 2006-7.

I carried the loose pages with me, rolled up in my saddlebags on the bike, as I moved around Europe... and worked with posca pens and pencils.

This page in particular strikes me, as it's the first one with my bike in it, and the handwritten text mentions standing in a queue, which reminds me of the beginning of my journey - by bike and then train, then bike again, up to Rosyth from Edinburgh, to get a big ferry to Zeebrugge.

Because the time previous to this journey was full of family drama, death and grief, it was a most powerful symbolic act to begin moving, and to keep moving. As I started making my journey, the weight of all these things carried began to fall away. I got into the very present physicality, and into the ease of simply taking care of security, passage, food, water, rest and doing very little but sketching and watching the world roll by.

I really like what unfolds in this drawing: the figure in particular feels like a strong representation of the state that I was in at that time. It feels like a sovereign figure in some way, but it also shows the overwhelm of suddenly being exposed to all the busy-ness of travel and folks around me also travelling.

I remember the sense of liberation, from setting out, and how it was balanced by a sense of exhilaration and even fear of consequence of letting go...

The drawings that I created whilst on the journey, had an immediacy and a looseness, that was a true antidote to all that had unfolded beforehand - and they provided also an anchor for me, as I travelled: I love how art keeps us Right - how the activity of drawing or painting primal-y, spontaneously and intuitively, keeps some kind of sacred balance between all things, which modern life puts such a lot of effort into unbalancing.