Pages

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Are You There?




















Are You There?
Double Plate Etching, Chine-Collé.
30cm x 30cm. 2015. 

What happens after death? That eternal question will probably never get answered, and yet, I keep asking it. As part of the series in which I grieve the sudden loss of my father, I made another piece. (I'm also working on other pieces at the moment, but I'm not quite finished with this series yet).
This piece is a combination of two earlier prints from last semester. In a fluke experiment in which I combined two unfinished pieces a few months ago, I got an interesting proof, which I discarded as 'not what I wanted' at the time. After I had considerably altered both plates, I looked back at the proof and thought it was one of the most interesting pieces, so I decided to recreate a similar image to that lost proof. And here it is. This is a two plate print, printed on a warm toned Asian paper (Honen). One plate is black with the figures and the washes in the background. The second plate is a fine line pattern that I printed on top of the black in a lighter grey. (The lines are sitting raised on top of the black, which unfortunately isn't really visible in the photograph). The subtle lines and patterns are a kind of trace or presence that permeates everything, the body and the spirit. I find it hard to put into words what I am trying to portray in this piece, because I've worked more intuitively than I usually do. I'm experimenting with two different kinds of visual language (the washes or larger solid areas with photographic work, and the hand-drawn patterns and line work) and overlap both of them. This is my first tentative approach of layering imagery, which I find quite difficult to do, but which I've also wanted to try for a long time already, because layering images is so inherently part of printmaking. I like it and I hope it'll lend itself to my future work.


Sunday, January 18, 2015

The Project Space - Julio Valdez Studio

Two of my prints, Waving Goodbye and Return, that won the 'Best in Show' award last year at the 4th Biennial FootPrint International at the Center for Contemporary Prints in Connecticut are currently part of a selection of this exhibition at The JVS Project Space in New York. The show runs from Jan. 18th until February 3rd.


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Cover Images

Since Monday I'm back at the university and my second semester of my MFA has started. I'm in the early struggle stages of developing some new ideas. I've been gathering some books and reading materials and I have jotted down possible image ideas in writing, but I always have such a hard time picking up the pencil and starting to put my ideas into images on paper. Hopefully I'll have some new work to show soon.

In the meanwhile, two of my artworks, one earlier painting and a more recent print, have been featured on two publication covers recently: Winnipeg (2006) is on the cover of On Manitoba, the University of Manitoba Alumni Magazine, Fall 2014, and My Winnipeg III (2012) on the cover of the University of Manitoba Press Catalogue, Spring 2015.


WHERE Magazine - Artist Profile

WHERE Edmonton (Magazine) printed an artist profile about me. Fabian Flintoff, a board member at the Harcourt House Arts Center, met with me for an interview and to look at my prints a few months ago. He wrote the following piece which you can access online here or see image below (click image to enlarge).