blog

How does she do that?

16/03/2016
It’s a question which often crops up at private views, as guests peer at my work trying to work out which techniques I have used to create my prints or mixed media paintings.

Whether my prints are unique hybrid prints bringing together various methods such as monoprint, screen print and digital, or purely digital, they don’t usually look like something that has involved working with a computer. This isn’t because I aim to emulate traditional printmaking methods or hesitate to commit fully to a digital way of working. It is more that my interest lies in how working digitally, and in particular how it can be blended and merged with ‘analogue’ printmaking methods reflects our experiences and thought processes now: a mixture of direct and mediated experience, and of the interior and exterior worlds.

To find out more, take a look at the Magazine section of the printmakers’ website printsolo You can now find there a short demonstration of how I created a direct digital print, STREET SCENE I, which brought together imagery from various sources in to a digital collage.

As the days lengthen, I am drifting back into the studio to get down to some more focussed work for the two exhibitions I have committed to later in the year.

One of these, SHIFTING STATES, is about liminality, an interesting if rather slippery concept. Originating in anthropology and psychology, its literal meaning is ‘on the threshold’, and it refers to states, times and places out of the normal order or state of being, the fluid and malleable condition of suspension between one state, time place and another. No wonder artists are drawn to it. I’ve been thinking of addressing this theme for some time. I am co-curating the exhibition with fellow Espacio Gallery member Erika Wengenroth and we have spent the last few months bringing together a very strong group of artists, both Espacio members and a number of guest artists working in printmaking, painting, photography, sculpture, installation and film.

So having concentrated on curatorial duties for a while, it is now time for me to focus on my own work. I can’t think of a better guide than this comment by Andre Gide.

‘Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore’

Time to cast off.