2015 – 2018
‘Composition in Blue 2015’

Sometimes, the journey matters as much as the arrival or destination, and so it is with ‘Composition in Blue.’ Its elements are simple: bottles, cobalt blue, of various shapes and sizes; the colour blue: primary, elemental, the sky, sea, calm. To work with these simple elements I drew upon a long tradition in art, that of still life, where everyday objects are arranged at the artist’s will and the process of art making begins. In this tradition, the grouping and style of rendition of the subjects convey meaning far beyond the sum of parts. Here, the process of transformation, the making of the print, has been my focus and preoccupation.

Through successive layering of colour upon colour, the blue has taken on a range of tones and depths. The blue bottles have been stripped back to the purest essence of their individual shapes, almost devoid of their original intense colour, as though they have bled and been diffused into the blue against which they stand. The outcome of these print iterations owes less to my vision than to my fascination with the process of composition, my wish to allow the alchemy, the trans-formative capacity of the printmaking process, to prevail in determining the specific appearance of the finished print.

My agency in the process rests in the choice and grouping of objects and the choice of colour, the successive preliminary printings, the deliberate relinquishing of control over the intensity of colour and emotional tone. The outcome is a work where the tensions inherent in the process of art making have left no trace, and where form and subtlety of colour speak of stillness, calm and reflection.

Playful Observations of still life