Fate and Memory: Pillar of Echoes

“Pillar of Echoes” is a charcoal drawing/ painting that reflects on silence, memory, and the traces left behind. Through layered tonal contrasts, erasure, and echoes-like textures, the work transforms absence into presence, allowing forgotten voices to resonate in form and shadow.

Art Technique: Layering charcoal tones (from deep black to soft gray) using liquid charcoal as a base. Textural erasure and smudging to suggest erosion and fading echoes.

Medium/Material: Charcoal on Winsor & Newton acid-free 220gsm paper.

Production Year: 2025.

Artist Statement:

In my charcoal work, I seek to investigate form through light and absence. Shadows are not just the lack of light but active presences—brooding, shaping, defining. Charcoal offers me a vocabulary of both control and spontaneity. I use vine charcoal for initial gestural lines, then compressed charcoal to build up dense layers and dramatic blacks. I exploit smudging and erasure to reveal, hide, and distort. The paper surface plays a critical role—its texture becomes part of the composition; tooth, weight, and grain all influence how charcoal responds. I intend to make the viewer’s eye move across expanses of value, noticing the shifts between deep blacks, mid-tones, and glimmers of untouched paper. My work aspires to invite reflection: on what is absent as much as what is present; to challenge our expectations of clarity, of edges; to allow space for ambiguity. I want the viewer to linger in the in-between: between light and dark, clarity and blur, seen and unseen.