If the 20th Century was the age of Ideology then the 21st is going to be the age of Biological Revolution. It will be the era where biological changes start to transform systems of the natural world. This drawing is part of a suite of works that investigate the roles of parasites and pathogens in ecosystems, focusing not just on the natural systems but also on the disruption caused to them through conflict with the human world. The subject of this work is the Ribeiroia ondatrae parasite, which in recent years has entered into waterways infecting amphibian populations and causing limb deformities. Scientists investigating this event attribute it to a number of factors including increased agricultural pesticide run off weakening amphibian immune systems and warming pond water temperatures creating favourable breeding conditions for the parasite populations.

In my recent drawing practice I have started employing a technique of puncturing the drawing leaving a small raised hole, suggestive of a scar, an insect trail or braille-like mark. These organic motifs also allude to the idea of something inhabiting or invading the paper surface in the same way that the parasite infects and subsequently deforms the amphibian. I see my work as articulating a record of nature that is neither bucolic nor exotic, a fabric of natural systems that we struggle to comprehend but which is intricately bound to our future as a species, and one that is both evolving and disappearing at the same time.