This conversation between Es Devlin and Merlin Sheldrake featured a wide-ranging discussion that considered drawing as a way of thinking, observing and understanding the world.
Moving between artistic practice, biology and lived experience, they reflected on drawing as a bodily act that sharpens attention and reveals patterns shared across human and non-human systems, from lungs and trees to fungal networks and architecture. Through stories from their own work, they explored how drawing can help us notice relationships and develop a deeper awareness of our connection to the environments we inhabit.
This conversation formed part of our 25th-anniversary series of discussions with leading artists and creatives exploring how drawing shapes creative practice across disciplines.
Es Devlin
Artist and stage designer, Es Devlin’s work explores biodiversity, linguistic diversity and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works. Her canvas ranges from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, V&A, Serpentine, Imperial War Museum and United Nations General Assembly, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the National Theatre and the Metropolitan Opera, as well as Olympic Ceremonies, Super-Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyoncé, The Weeknd, Dr Dre, Kendrick Lamar and U2.
She is the subject of a major new monographic book, An Atlas of Es Devlin, described by Thames & Hudson as their most intricate and sculptural publication to date, and a retrospective exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Museum of Design in New York. She was the first female designer of the UK Pavilion at Expo 2020 and her practice was the subject of the Netflix documentary series Abstract: The Art Of Design. She has been awarded The London Design Medal, three Olivier Awards, a Tony Award, an Ivor Novello Award, doctorates from the Universities of Bristol, Kent and the University of the Arts London as well as Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts and CBE.
Merlin Sheldrake
Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist, writer, and speaker with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. He is a research associate of Oxford University and the Vrije University Amsterdam, the UK Policy Lead at the Fungi Foundation, Chief Impact Officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN), and the 2025 Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Human Rights and Global Justice, NYU. In 2025, together with Giuliana Furci and Toby Kiers he won a Climate Breakthrough Award to work with fungi to mitigate climate change.
His book, 'Entangled Life', is a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, won the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize, and was nominated for a number of other prizes, including the British Book Awards and the Rathbones Folio Prize. It has been translated into thirty-two languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide. Merlin is the presenter of 'Fungi: Web of Life', a giant screen documentary narrated by Björk.
Merlin’s research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. He is a musician and performs on the piano and accordion.
Recommended reading
A selection of books referenced by the speakers during the talk, alongside a few additional recommendations from Merlin Sheldrake.
- David Abram, 'Becoming Animal'
- David Abram, 'The Spell of the Sensuous'
- Jill Bolte Taylor, 'My Stroke of Insight'
- James Gleick, 'Chaos'
- Iain McGilchrist, 'The Master and His Emissary'
- Iain McGilchrist, 'The Matter With Things'
- Richard Powers, 'The Age of Wonder'
- Richard Powers, 'The Overstory'
- Zoe Schlanger, 'The Light Eaters'
- Merlin Sheldrake, 'Entangled Life'
- Andrea Wulf, 'The Invention of Nature'