The activity of drawing in Liz Ballard’s work becomes a performative trace composed by the slow thawing of frozen pigment. Translating the conventions and methodologies of the traditional watercolour landscape into the public performative realm, she produces translucent coloured drawings from time released frozen pigment: the work staging changes of state transitions, from the solid to liquid, geometric to the organic, abstraction to figuration.

In this piece, the melting ice is apparently allowed to find its own path, while actually being discreetly directed by invisible masking fluid that dictates its ultimate form. Here the present outline of the River Orwell has been laid down, allowing the thawing pigment to simultaneously follow it’s own and the Orwell’s course.

This large scale drawing will be produced through ‘melting’ over the full two-week period of the festival.