GALLERY
MOTHER NATURE
Mother Nature is mad. She is angry. She has had it with us humans treating her like she's a doormat. No more Ms Nice Guy. She is done trying to show us her beauty and splendor only for us to trample all over her pretty flowers and poison her water. She is going to burn us, drown us, flick us off her skin with storms. Enough is enough.
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This body of work was shown at White River Gallery as a part of The printing Girls group exhibition. I used Oil sticks and printing in to print directly from a perspex plate, as well as working with stencils and the trace monotype technique to complete my images.
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Go to Mother Nature in Events page for more
LOST LACE
The Lost Lace project questions my background as a white European with its attendant privileges. Currently living in the Netherlands, I'm focused on the Dutch understanding of their history as a slave-trading nation as it influences national identity. German-educated post-war, I'm acutely aware that one's national history involves responsibilities, not only to prevent future atrocities but to effect restitution. I use multiple printing techniques, including linocut, etching and found object printing. My images evolve through research and intuition over long periods of time.
ECOLONGING
Our 2020 Art Room exhibition featured a project called Positive Escape - three months into lockdown, each artist created a printed image on 20 x20 cm paper that showed one positive way that they were coping with lockdown. This year, the mood has shifted. Now 18 months into the pandemic, many have had to deal with illness and/or the loss of close ones, and there is a different zeitgeist. This (includes a sense of being displaced from nature. We came up with the concept of eco-longing, an effect experienced by many folk due to the restrictions of lockdown. We asked each TPG artist to represent a way that they feel this disconnection. Their resulting responses created a wonderful variety of images, mostly of nature, that ranged from the dream-like and nostalgic, through to the quirky mostly of nature, that ranged from the dream-like and nostalgic, through to the quirky and abstract.
The Printing Girls' membership has almost doubled this year, and here, almost 50 TPG artists from The Printing Girls participated in the project.
THE DAPHNE PROJECT
In keeping with our main exhibition theme of Mother Nature in Monotype, we are revisiting one of the original associations between woman and nature - the Greek myth of Daphne. In brief, according to this myth, Daphne was the daughter of the river god Peneus, well known for her exceptional beauty. She had taken a vow of chastity to enable her to live in woodlands as a huntress and avoid the trappings of society and the restrictions of marriage. But she was pursued one day by a lustful Apollo. Just before he captured her, in a state of exhaustion she prayed to her father and the Goddess Gaia - Mother Earth - for rescue and was metamorphosed into a laurel tree. Daphne subsequently lost her voice and the only sound she could make was by rustling her leaves. Apollo used his power of eternal youth to turn the laurel into an evergreen tree. He broke off a branch and since then, a laurel branch is always associated with him in mythological imagery.
Like all myths, this story is timeless so still has many possibilities for a contemporary interpretation. To many, it may initially sound like a romantic though sad story. But although she remained forever beautiful, through Apollo's ill-intentions Daphne became a woman with lost potential - no voice, immobile, unable to follow her passion to roam the woods and hunt.
Recently, this myth has been picked up as a symbol for the #MeToo movement. This myth is particularly relevant in Women's Day month when, alongside celebrating our womanhood, we are reminded each day of our country's continuing plaque of gender-based violence