Today we had a lecture from a local artist Emma Mclellan, speaking about the progression of her artworks over time. She has always had a liking towards animals, and her earlier highschool works depicted animals with a perculiar human nature to them. She prefers to work with print media in a loose freeform style, and her works are often multilayered over canvas, paper or wood blocks. She does not like the strained cleanliness of traditional printmaking where you have many restrictions, need to be perfect, and imperfectionless. She prefers these imperfections, and mistakes.
I noticed that she had made many works titled with the name "chimera" in it. (chimera series II above) I decided then to research the name since I have never heard of it before, and found that this was the name of a great fire breathing, mythological creature. It too, like most of her works was made up of several different types of animals - lion headed, goats body, with a snakes behind. In animals, variation would be key to shaping and creating some of the worlds best creatures, even if not as extravagant as some of the worlds mythological wonders.
Emma's inspriration is mostly drawn from the intricate wallpaper designs of 17th century artist, William Morris. He works mostly with animals and nature, creating busy winding designs for a commercial use in furnature, curtains and wallpapers. Another inspiration point for her are the many bestiarie books where apon artists have tried to depict newley discovered animals with great difficulty, as the artist is often merely listening to the adventurer's descriptions. The depictions of the the animal itself would have become much more distorted, and more fantasy like as the artist would have never seen these amazing creatures themselfs. who knows? perhaps the adventurer was being a bit buff and made a few of the scariest ones up! Horses with long twisted horns, a rhinocerous with strange armour-like skin. They were playing god by creating all of these fantastical creatures. She enjoys these because they are not what they are supposed to be. They are not perfect, and much like her printing style, they have flaws.
Emma's idea is to take these old designs and strange drawings, re-print them, and make them her own. In doing so, she had used Photoshop to scan in and manipulate the beasts , creating strange new hybrids. She then used the print screen process to print her beasts and pieces of wallpaper over previously painted or sanded down surfaces. Like Morris, she also enjoyed printing on fabrics. Traditional printing requires you to take one large sweep, printing the entire image, however she does not print in such a way. she prefers to print small sections of the wallpaper over her work, making her prints irregular and imperfect. This links into her own ideas on life, that it is never perfect. there will always be a flaw within it. even our own brains are imperfect when it comes to remembering exactly what something looks like. The old bestiarie books may have looked rather different if our minds could imagine the perfect image of an animal and draw it just so. Luckilly todays screen printing process does not require the largest brain to duplicate images, however even so, there may still be a few mistakes.
This is a reason why she loves the manual techniques of printing. With the hand, your picture is open for so many man-made flaws. Off-set ink, wrong colourations, sizing difficulties. Imperfections that cannot always be helped. She also prefers not to have the restrications of traditional printmaking. Most techniques limit you to printing on paper. Screen printing hardly limits you at all, being able to print on plastic, fabric, glass ect. making the results of the print even more unpredictable. This is what can make a print so unique. Like life, her art will always vary, and change.
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