Proposal Abstract

I’d like to show my portfolio of metamorphosing etchings. These are monotypes, inked up differently, printed upside down, layered and collaged. They were combined and printed with no image in mind, only the intention to quest. The subject of the work echoes the methodology; it describes the dense undergrowth of the forest of the mind, that pathless and infinite forest which exists so powerfully in our imagination. I am fascinated by the idea of a symbolic landscape: forms and symbols which conjure an atavistic response in us. Chine-colle’d block prints like hieroglyphs pose amid the chaos and call forth the magic wings, the wall of briars, the ruined tower, the witch’s hut with hens’ legs, the perilous chapel lost in the forest. Unicorns and other spiritual animals are glimpsed, only to disappear into the darkness, or are they pulled down into the leaf-mould and digested? The depths of the forest are explored, just as the mordant adventures into the surface of the metal etching plates and leaves the line of its passing for different colours of ink to perch in like birds.