24 April 2026
The Leonardo book A Life in Drawing (2019) has been open on the floor of my studio this week; specifically his map drawings. In the summer of 1504, he was employed by the Florentine government to map parts of the river Arno, and there's one drawing in particular that I keep returning to—on page 127, fig. 93—A weir on the Arno east of Florence. It describes damage to the river embankment from water bursting through a weir. Such a wonderful drawing, the movement of the water alive in his precisely-rendered rushing and swirling lines, the site of destruction gently heightened with a darker blue than the rest of the wash representing the water. That meeting, between the physical intensity of natural phenomena and measured observational focus such that the eye dilates enough to make room for the emotion of a space to enter through the hand, is something close to what I'm after right now.