the sea, her offerings, 2020

‘The Sea, Her Offerings’ extends on My Drift, Drifting works. I turn my attention to the sea’s dual offerings: time-carved driftwood; and the intangible offer of a sense of calm, a kind of reverie in contrast with our fast, contemporary reality. As such, this work is a meditation on my experience of being in – and appreciating – the Australian coastal landscape.

My practice explores opportunities for the use of repetitive mark-making and seriality to be generative of both heightened sensory perception and intimate focus and groundedness. In this way I see my practice as a slow making practice. My work aims to use repetitive mark to transfer these affective experiences from artist to viewer.

This body meditates on my own liminal space, accessed in nature. I photographed the turbulent sea to record its elemental force and beauty. My delicate repetitive dot veil over the image promotes its ability to inspire mindful presence in the moment experienced in being and in remembering.

Each work in this series is printed as a cyanotype, in some cases employing double exposures with a photographic negative and a drawn ‘negative’ on transparency film. Some involve experimental wet cyanotype processes involving sea salt and seawater. The beautiful cyanotype process is appropriate to my slow making practice in that it is a natural process utilising the sun, and that I can use it to print on fibres such as cotton and with natural materials in the process, including sand and sea salt. The prints are all mounted on plywood which I have carved, referencing the time-carved driftwood that the sea washes up. The works are varnished in acrylic paint.