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The Nature of Wilderness responds to the interconnected relationship between nature and industry. The series brings together imagery formed through organic processes with imagery generated through industrial means, creating a tension between two distinct layers of mark making. Handmade flax paper, impressed with the subtle warp and weft of natural imprints, is overlaid on a porous surface containing industrial pigments. Through this interplay, the work explores the conceptual properties of material, representing the natural world through dualities of light and dark, lightness and weight. Across these unique state prints, an ongoing dialogue unfolds between matter and process, in which the porosity of the paper allows the materials to appear active and responsive.
The Nature of Wilderness reflects on the 2017 QCAD folio box Tension, which foregrounded materiality in printmaking and opened with Antonio Tapies’ reflection on the equilibrium reached between the potential of materials and the artist’s ideas. The artist identifies a clear synergy with this emphasis, extending it through an examination of the tensile relationship between wilderness and industry. Drawing on strategies found in Tension, including offset imagery, bleed printing and multiple layered processes, the work pursues further experimentation by combining pulp printing, hand formed paper, layering, disruption and monoprinting with industrial pigments. In doing so, it connects the legacy of the folio box with a contemporary investigation of how conceptual and material properties align in the printmaking process.
