The word 'Drawing' evolved, for me, to denote a concept of 'not-painting'; or rather 'not-positing'. Sketchbooks have tended to be a starting point, from childhood in Leicester into my fifties in London. www.paulryan.co.uk

Norwegian curator Goran Ohldieck toured my sketchbooks during the 1990s, funded by Foundation 3,14; throughout Central Europe and Scandinavia. This led on to me making large scale 're-drawings', using a form of pointillism to carefully explore each expressive mark within a sketch (as with 'Slowly Slowly' exhibited here). One of these drawings, 'Concentrate', now in the Imperial War Museum collection, was a prizewinner at the first Jerwood Drawing Competition. That prize led to me returning to education to undertake an AHRC funded MA, and PhD at Wimbledon UAL Centre for Drawing, completing 2009. It was, in part, about the sketchbook as a place to write as much as draw; relating this to Schiller's aesthetic and Peirce's semiotic. They seemed to suggest that such formalising and expressing, in oscillation, is where insight and play might arise.

Since then I have also curated, using 'unfinished' as a guiding principle; for example in 'What the Folk Say', at Compton Verney, UK. There, the exhibited 'works' were juxtapositions, constructed out of a folk art object meeting a fine artwork; then reinterpreted in part through a text by the selecting artist, and of course also by each visitor.

For the last four years, an ongoing project about Musil's late writings has brought me close to 'illustration': a word as worrisome as 'sketch', for some aficionados.

I have collaborated with other artists including Daniel Baker, Kate Davis, Jeremy Deller; at Venice Biennale, Tate, Frieze. Collections include The British Museum, V&A, IWM.

Recently I have taken a step back, primarily for health reasons. However, I continue to collaborate with friends, and think about ideas for making.