Today, when people speak of prints, often they really mean reproductions of original art, in any medium. But when artists make prints, each one is an original, no matter how large the edition. Before I started painting exclusively, I was making a body of work in the printmaking shop. Some of these were woodcuts, linocuts, etchings, & lithographs. I loved each one for its unique properties & process, but my real focus was silkscreen. Like painting, silkscreen is a layering process of color over color, shape over shape. At the time, it most suited my way of seeing and building an image. Initially I made my stencils by cutting numerous marks into tracing paper, but I soon switched to a photographic stencil method—which was still tedious but much more stable and expedient. I learned so much about mark-making and building a surface in printmaking, technical issues that I carried over into my painting. But after several years, painting stole my time...totally.
My Chronicle as an Artist
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
∞T.S. Eliot
5: Threads
I knew I wanted to create a body of work which was essentially about landscape. The pieces here are from a series called "The Lake is Not the Ocean". As I worked, I imagined flying over all the places I had loved and tracked my movement with a vocabulary of marks--wavy & straight lines, verticals & horizontals, dots & dashes. I used a paintbrush like a pencil, and the works were small & intricate. Chicago & Virginia melded together into unique places. Looking back on these & other works like them from this time period, I realize that my technical approach was not unlike the sewing & needlework projects of my teen years.
