Playing with My New Toys

Recently I splurged on a little printing press that works by pressure rather than rolling over the image. It came in the mail the other day. Then today I got some rubbery "easy cut" blocks from another art supply company. With no commitments, I set to work. The press works very well, much to my relief (no pun intended). The top print is made from a woodcut I did a few days ago while I was still fascinated with fetuses. The other one I did on the new block. It is yet another of my mother's dolls. This one was printed twice, hence the messy registration. Like many mistakes, it turned out to be more pleasing to me than the perfect ones. I didn't like the cuts I had made on the right side of the print, so I collaged a piece of paper over the area. That fixed the problem, and added a new dimension to the print. I used chine collee on the other one, too, in order to liven up and otherwise over cut block. I like that one, too.

...not to put too fine a point on it

So here is the next piece of work......very quickly done yesterday on a piece of Yupo paper with my subtractive method. It's a direct statement that explains the painting so haltingly squeezed out of my unconscious mind over the last few weeks. What fun............and what comes next? I already know that Fibonacci and I are going for a wild ride......

Finished product

Probably I would have been able to go on and on with this, but at some point it has to be called finished.

Evolution

I've spent many days working on this. It's certainly derivative of what I used to do in school, but not exactly the same. My approach was the same, though. I put down whatever came into my head without thinking about why, obscuring each layer as I moved on. Usually by the time I am finished, I am able to find some theme, and this is no exception. The process is very absorbing, very interesting, to unlock pieces of information in the unconscious mind and let them float into consciousness without evaluating them. As I worked toward the visual part of the painting, I simply focused on the image I had made. This is another wholly absorbing activity. I spent days just working on the intricacies of the shells, thinking of nothing but their details. You would think I would have memorized them after staring at them for so many hours, but I know I haven't. If I should decide to go back and paint them again, I would see them in even more detail, and what was minuscule would be obvious. There would be more intricacies......