ABOUT.

INTERVIEW.

Q: What motivates you and why printmaking?

A: I am fascinated by the expressive nature of human motion and its dialogue with space. I construct and engineer my forms instead of drawing directly from life and build suggestions of meaning into my compositions and visual provocations.

As much as I am concerned with the conceptual side of my work, I am interested in stretching the creative possibilities of the materials I work with. Whether it is a zinc, steel, or copper plate matrixes, which I treat as a sculptural medium, or semi-transparent paper, which I use to layer individual images to create an illusion of depth or references of shifts in time, I strive to meticulously choose the materials that would be a joy for the senses and a thrill for the mind. Beyond printmaking, I paint, draw, sculpt, make, and design.

But I always come back to print.

My work is a celebration of life and a reflection upon its highs and lows and tensions in between. It is concerned not only with physical structure but also with the thoughts and emotions that move us into action. It is also about how the environments we inhabit shape and change us.

My work is about life, which is movement.

Q: When did you first employ printmaking as part of your creativity and what drew you to the medium?

A: Making prints, in most simple terms, is a method of producing works of graphic art. Both “graphic arts” and “independent” have to make sense in the equation of one’s life ahead of setting sail for the future of a studio artist.

I made my first original print at twenty-eight. In the years preceding, I was trained in architecture and worked in advertising and publishing, and I loved and loathed aspects of both professions. As often happens, life adjusted context and aspirations. Motherhood and moving to a new country precipitated the change, so I became who I am now – an artist with a printing press. Initially, the decision to go independent was guided by a survival instinct. It was my way of claiming a place in the world at a time when the sense of self was under threat from sweeping social pressures.

A few things appealed to me from the get-go. I appreciated printmaking as a communicational art form – a print is often born with an audience in mind – and I love that aspect of addressing the work to viewers. Furthermore, printmaking plugs an artist into the vast and fascinating cultural heritage, this gave me a feeling of instant belonging. Additionally, there are creative gains and rituals, the flow of the process. Out of which a sense of devotion to the craft had sprung.

Q: What are your favoured methods for creating your work in print and why?

A: The indirect process of making prints appeals to me greatly. Before the plates turn into impressions, there is the fascination of developing their form and function in one’s mind. There is a tug and pull between intellectual and unselfconscious. The complex processes of printmaking are a succession of actions and reactions – it is human, and thrilling.

Naturally, I delight in freehand drawing and how a line translates from a plate to a print. The other side of me is fascinated with what an eye perceives as tone: the representation of light and space.

Graphic arts are, by nature, reductive and assume functions of a language: with functions, rules, and perception mechanisms. But these mechanisms are open-ended. The rules are there yet not there – you can utilize existing ones or make up your own. There is also an option of breaking the rules entirely.

Artists (especially in graphics) tend to follow pathways afforded by the mediums we work in. But the creative quest is to find tangible, engaging, and original ways to share ideas. Art above all is an illusion materialized, with as many illusions as there are minds to read them.

And as I intuitively lean toward storytelling in my work, I find myself endlessly negotiating between the methods and materials, something I believe will never end.

Q: What do you hope to convey in your work?

A: Intrigue and wonder. A seed of thought. To stir and to comfort. Bestow a connection.  Art is the language that helps us “paint” emotions, and communicate something for which we have no language, yet. On either side of the emotional spectrum, there are no words/no logic, so my work is a perception mechanism that helps me deal with the potency and vastness of these imagined possibilities.

Q: Who and what has inspired your creativity (artists, art movements, experience)?

A: A search to find avenues of expressing perceivable yet nonverbal binds all visual artists together and makes them kindred spirits. Art, the way I see it, is not a consecutive line of eras and names. It is an abundant field: self-ruling, everlasting, and free to work on –  pick your tools and have a go. As long as humanity is there, there will be some form of art, it is a state of pure being first. An artefact is simply a proof of that state and as such a proof of life.

The most inspiring art for me is nudging to think and feel, the one open to questioning and not devoid of playfulness.  I am equally interested in Roman sculpture, medieval manuscripts, orthodox icons, renaissance drawing, Japanese woodblock, Colour Field, generative computer art, and many more ways humans explored, recorded and shared their experiences. It is impossible to feel lonely in art.

BACKGROUND, PUBLICATIONS & SHOWS.