CURRENT WORK
“Come Hither,” “Clivia Unbound,” “The Mind’s Garden,” “What to Do?”
For the past several years I have been using the lower, dried-up section of an ancient clivia plan as the source for what has become 4 bodies of related work. The section is made up of the papery parts of cut off dead leaves and worm-like rootlets jutting out.
The “Come Hither” drawings, using dark brown pen, are closely cropped, compressed images, built up with linear marks. They seem both floral and papery, yet also sharp and secretive. There is invitation and seduction, and at the same time menace and danger. There is also a pleasing ambiguity about what one is looking at. I am drawn to these qualities. The work has a dark feel to it, with conflicting feelings imbedded. Those feelings are reactions to both the actual source material, and to the context of my life.
Subsequently, with the “Clivia Unbound” series, I began exploring what happens when I draw using colored pens on both sides of semi-transparent Duralar. I chose to work with two colors in order to become conceptually able to think about having two plates to use for making future prints. It was more interesting to me to use the two colors, not to describe space specifically, but to create two different color areas, along with the third color of the white paper. These drawings are flatter, and more abstract. They feel more open than the “Come Hither” drawings.
Since summer 2018 I’ve had days of collaborative printing with master printer Carolyn Muscat. The imagery is freer, lighter. I am playing with it, mixing things up, taking risks not taken before. We make multi-layered proofs. I continue with hand painting on most of them. The results conjure up “The Mind’s Garden” to me, giving me joy. It’s not clear to me where these images reside — are they only in the mind, do they exist out in space, under water? I don’t know.
The “What to Do?” series adds black as a color. As with “The Mind’s Garden” series, in Carolyn’s print shop we try this and that, figure out what to do, add transparent layers. There are many surprises, and I don’t know where the work will go. It is about not knowing. The process is more unpredictable and up in the air than most of my practice in the past. This not knowing seems to relate to the upheavals in my life of the last few years. In my studio I add hand painting. There may well be further printing and more hand painting before a piece is finished. These pieces excite me because they look like something I never could have imagined ahead of time and the black brings back a tension I like in the “Come Hither” drawings.