Currents I, II, III

by Ian Hanseworth

For almost a decade, Ian Hanesworth has filled sketchbooks with a meditative drawing practice, in which they create a series of concentric lines rippling out from center points. These drawings resemble topographical maps and the surface of water. These specific works were inspired by a spring near their parents’ farm. Hanesworth has written beautifully about their relationship to this body of water:

The spring is set back into the edge of the forest, where cold clear water emerges from the ground and makes its way over a landscape of moss-covered stones, rotting logs, and thick floating mats of watercress. Remnants of three stone walls partially enclose the space around the spring. The walls belong to an old spring house built more than a century before my parents raised me and my sisters in this valley. Spending our summer days wading in the spring, my sisters and I came to know the joy and pleasure of drinking wild water as it flowed out of the earth and into our bodies. Through the decaying stone walls and fragments of glass and pottery, we came to understand that people lived here in relationship with this water long before we did, and even long before the spring house was built. … I sought to capture the water’s ceaseless, gurgling energy in these prints. The intricacies of carving this abstract composition provided time and space to ponder the significance of this sacred water to me and my family, to all of the people that have lived in this valley before us, and to the people that I hope will come to know this clean, clear water for generations to come.