Flight Study 1 by Peter Burke is a carbon drawing that explores the staircase as a distilled diagram of movement, transition, and human experience. In contrast to the artist’s sculptural works in steel and gold leaf, this drawing reduces form to its most immediate and essential language, using line, tone, and shadow to investigate the underlying structure of ascent and descent. Executed in carbon, the work emphasises immediacy and directness of mark-making. The surface is shaped by a rhythm of gestures that suggest fragmented architectural space rather than a fully resolved structure. Within this reduction, the staircase becomes an abstracted sequence of steps and intervals, evoking motion without the presence of a fully constructed environment. The drawing captures not a fixed object, but the idea of movement through space. As part of Burke’s wider practice, Flight Study 1 reflects his interest in how industrialised and technologically mediated environments shape perception. Here, however, the language shifts from material construction to drawn suggestion, allowing a more intimate and reflective engagement with form. The absence of steel and gold leaf removes the sculptural tension of weight and surface, replacing it with the psychological immediacy of the drawn line. The staircase in this context becomes a mental structure as much as a physical one. It suggests pathways of thought, memory, and emotional transition, where direction is fluid and open to interpretation. The ambiguity of the drawing allows ascent and descent to coexist, reinforcing Burke’s interest in the instability of meaning and the layered nature of human experience. Measuring 45 x 45 cm, the work maintains a contained, balanced format that reinforces its study-like quality. Flight Study 1 functions as both investigation and distillation, offering a concentrated reflection on the recurring motif of the flight of stairs as a metaphor for passage, transformation, and the quiet complexity of everyday human movement through space and time.