Dialogue with the work

This entry is about my on-going project (be)longing which looks at themes of race, heritage, transracial adoption and estrangement. Click here to read all of the posts on this topic.

I have continued to experiment with the visual ideas around islands. I feel like I have honed my process of making the island prints now, and on Monday and Tuesday found myself falling into a really deep flow state whilst making them. That familiar feeling of fixation, where time stops and I am engrossed in the act of making, a kind of gooey and electrifying feeling coursing around my body.

There is something about the unpredictability of working with inks that both unnerves and excites me. It unnerves me because I like perfection and it isn’t something that you can strive for when working with liquids that slip and slide in directions uninstructed. Yet there’s something about that same fluidity that excites me: the unpredictability. Sometimes I thought of the islands as bodies - not of land - but human. The liquid as emotions, sprawling out whilst simultaneously being contained and directed by myself. At times I found myself in dialogue with the work, asking what do you need? and waiting for it to direct me.

Go slower, move this way, let me breathe.. contain me...

I have been photographing the initial prints, editing them to remove little blotches and then re-printing them on to photo rag paper (as above). They look gorgeous on that paper because of the texture, although I think it could be pushed more.

I want more texture! I have some very thick recycled cotton paper but the printer struggles with it at times and knackers out the edges of the paper. It still looks gorgeous though (below).