Apocalypse now in a minute: 'printmaking in the anthropocene'**
About concepts and why I am studying.
I had no plan to study art or printmaking when I began making prints, I just saw things that had the right lines and feeling to them, put it together in my mind's eye and tried to make something that represented it, or something like it. I miss that state of mind but it was impossible for me to stay in it for very long; I knew that making simple lino prints of plants and animals wasn't going to be enough to represent all that I wish to communicate. Well, it might be, but I would have to go through a process before coming back to it and what then becomes clear is that with making art you are unable to ever go back, and at the same time constantly returning to the beginning of the circle.
My ideas are something along these lines: ecological collapse is on its way, no one is quite sure when, but I'd say it's now incontrovertibly happening. Personally, whatever I do in my life will engage with this issue, and what I want to do is make prints. So, prints about climate collapse? Urgh, not that simple. It's incredibly difficult to learn and master technique to help with what you want to say, and work out what it is exactly you are saying at the same time. This is basically the work of my Masters. I keep feeling I have explained it perfectly (often to myself at 4am), then come to write something and feel it slipping out of my grasp.
**Printmaking in the Anthropocene is the title of an exhibition by US artists Sean Cauldwell and Joan Greer at the university of Alberta.
