Palimpsest

A palimpsest is “a parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased

​A palimpsest is “a parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another, but which still bears the traces of the earlier writing. Palimpsests are the product of a layering of texts over a period of time.
Nowadays, the word palimpsest can refer not only to such a document but also to anything that has multiple layers or aspects apparent beneath the surface.
This thought leads me to describing what I do with drawings that…well, just don’t work. I shred them. I tear them into little tiny pieces and store them in a bucket under my desk. There they wait to be turned into hand made paper.
The shredded corpse of my rejected works are soaked, pulped and blended. What I produce is probably closer to a card than paper. As I don’t have a press, it is quite gnarly, the edges rough from the pour. Drawing on it takes focus to keep the detail; working around the bumps and hollows. It is a strangely pleasurable experience. And sometimes a small section of an older drawing defies its fate in the blender and survives in tack to become part of a new work… Palimpsest.