Each of these drawings resulted, directly or indirectly, from my working in a sketchbook. The first two, terra incognita and Trace Elements, which appear to be the open pages of a book but are not, refer back to drawings from the original sketchbook, but go far beyond them. The original drawings were made with pastel and covered a double page of the book. Upon completion I cut the binding threads to remove these pages, turned them over to tape them together, and - in a moment of serendipity - was surprised to discover traces they had left behind on the paper underneath. These "trace elements" became the basis of the present drawings: light, barely visible vestiges of movement or writing which were brought back to life with colored pencil and took on a completely different character than their original one: playful, multicolored, organic as well as geometric shapes. The last three drawings (Go!, Microcosm, Tail of the Comet) were made directly in the sketchbook and push this method still further, taking up on traces of all kinds, be they gestural or random.