Philip M Soucy

"Lines of Breath" explores the effect of breath and momentary presence through mixed media, most notably watercolor and ink. The work serves as a record of each breath, each moment, during its own creation, illustrating the process of thought, with later outlines and layers highlighting and sharpening the inherent twists and turns.

If the work is the documentation of a moment--a thought being formed--it is therefore also a record of neurons and synapses firing in the brain, and (perhaps not surprisingly) the form that naturally arises is reminiscent of the patterns found in a brain scan.

Tibetan monks spend weeks meditating on a single thought while creating intricate mandalas out of sand only to destroy them with gusts of air; my work plays to the opposite of this practice: a gust (or breath) creates the design, then weeks are spent illuminating those moments. For the monks, the thought illuminates form; in my work, form illuminates thought.