I feel a great affinity toward all things ceramic, clay, pottery, earth, gardening.
So working with tile six China Clay as the medium, adding waterbased pigments, feels very natural and comfortable for me as a material with which to work.
The substrate is a high fire green leather hard clay slab
and all the painting takes place on this surface.
It’s a combination of drawing, painting, and printing to get the imagery onto the clay slab. Then the image is printed on a sheet of Reemay paper (a synthetic, nonwoven, electromagnetically charged flat sheet of air conditioning filter ‘paper’ ).
A print is pulled by rubbing the back of the Reemay sheet pressing it onto the clay slab with the image. Sometimes a second or third print may be pulled from the same image on the slab without adding additional color, each image being considerably different from the previous one as clay as well as a pigment is pulled onto the Reemay each time a print is pulled.
There is quite a lot of ghost imagery remaining after each print is pulled and so one image evolves into the next as in a series or grouping or family.
Remnants,
shadows,
a continuity.
Why Clay Prints?
I never had particularly expected to do clay prints as a large component of my artwork.
Bit by bit, I was drawn into it and now it’s huge for me.
Half printmaking/half painting.
Fluid, flexible, spontaneous.
Being able to work and rework, intensify, add depth, in a 2-D and 3-D way.
So many marks agitatedly working.
I love going into the studio and boom,
I’m right there.
Moving, Part of that connection and continuity is working in series.
I work around an idea until it solves itself.
I think, make, continue working, and then curate.
Technique for Clay Mono Prints
China clay which is very fine is mixed with pigments then applied to a clay slab. The substrate of the finished print is Reemay, a product that is manufactured as a filter for air conditioners. Its very function as a filter for dust demonstrates its intrinsic qualities firmly holding the china clay, the vehicle for the colored pigment, to the substrate.
Each print pulled leaves a certain amount of residue which subsequently informs the following print pulled. No two are alike.
I work on clay monoprints during the winter in my studio, moving among 3 different sizes of clay slabs.
