Last October, I met with a professor at University of Wisconsin in Madison. We discussed my work and what he said changed my entire artistic practice. He said my work was substantial, but I needed to dig deeper to find more meaning. He mentioned I was so close to being there and that would take my work to the next level.
I tried to do just that from there on out. I created the series Mishap of Collision and was thinking about the meaning throughout making each monotype. This in return changed how the layers of ink interacted with each other on the paper. I was teaching pre school at the time and had a really tough Friday afternoon one day. Remembering that feeling and sentiment, one of my prints the next day had a deep dark black layer on top. Before the fall I might have just said that was chance and not planning out my work. During that series, my process changed and that black layer was intentional. One could see (and I think feel) what my Friday afternoon was like with those three year olds. I continued to remember those fleeting moments from that job and poured them into those prints (instead of my students).
After that series, I was given the chance to completely slow down my entire process because I had unlimited time in India to create. I adopted a practice of starting some prints with thumbnails in mind, but also staying true to my spontaneous methods. After a few were underway, I took a step back and really thought about the direction they were going in. The way Inside the Road came together is how I want to continue my practice. I found a theme that emerged which was the road and then really thought about what that could mean and how I was going to interpret it. I think it helped my audience in India understand the abstract work a little bit better and also took the prints/paintings to a new level.
Now back in America creating a new body of paintings has come underway for a show at Christopher Martins. I kept my same process of using a brayer with Golden High Flow Acrylics on primed canvas, which will then be stretched. I knew I liked the indigo accent I was using from my series in India, but I hadn’t bought a new bottle of paint yet. So, instead of pouring a heavy line in motion and letting it drip, I brought back the oval shapes that are so prominent in my monotypes. I carried this through in each of the paintings and Indigo Thumbprint was unveiled. Finding a theme this way has been exciting, but also challenging in some ways and has improved my practice.
Indigo Thumbprint is being installed on June 26th at Christopher Martins with a public reception on August 6th. The show will be up through September so plenty of time to see it!
