Install and Artist Statement

Ways of Seeing

Lauren Simons, 2025

This body of work investigates perception as an embodied, neurodivergent process. For me, drawing becomes a living record of cognition and sensation — what I have described as a kind of mind-map, a way of documenting what happens in my head as it unfolds. Rather than beginning with a predetermined outcome, the work develops through a position of not-knowing, allowing each work to emerge through chance, interruption, and iterative layering.

In this work, drawing functions as a sensory mode of perception. The pencil acts less as a tool, and more as an extension of the body, enabling marks that arise from touch, rhythm, and immediate attention. As layers accumulate—marks, annotations, partial forms—the drawing registers shifts in sensory experience, tracing oscillations between focus and distortion, clarity and overwhelm.

A central component of my practice is the act of splitting, fragmenting, and reconfiguring the image. Cutting the drawings in half between stages and shuffling them, destabalises authorship and mirrors the psychological splitting and perceptual states associated with my neurodivergence. These gestures minimise any singular viewpoint, allowing the work to be reconstituted through perspectives beyond my own.

Rather than forming a coherent representation, the drawings articulate a perceptual system that is fragmented, recursive, and deeply attentive. Through this process, I visualise the instability, intensity, and continual reassembly inherent in my way of seeing — a form of perception defined not by deficit but by difference, where subjective vision becomes material, visible, and shareable.

Series of Drawings

Chalk pastel, coloured pencil, and paint pen on paper

210mm x 150mm