Knowing what you want to achieve and achieving it… The creative process must take its own direction, it’s a process that can take multiple directions; I know that I want to create a series of prints that will be collated into a book, each one comprising two colours and based on images of photos of my coagulating blood cells. Despite this specific direction, I also recognize the need to embrace unexpected creative avenues.
Images: I am conscious that creating illustrations of my cells serves no function – if I am to introduce something new into an already saturated visual world, it must not be fodder, but something stimulating and challenging – multiple layers that can enrich on multiple viewings.
I am a huge fan of Suzi Gablik’s writing, she believed that art must allow the viewer to enter an encounter beyond just the visual and become something magically enriching on a visceral and transcendental level – so unfashionable today: the sublime that connects Turner to Mondrian to Newman. I am conscious to create work that is not ‘obvious’ that can serve to open up this type of experience touching the ‘numinous’, the ‘Other’ – lofty aims, but why create shallow art that is pointless and leaves the viewer only instantly gratified and not possibly changed in some way?
The prints must initially grab the viewer, but offer much more… The viewing experience should be a journey, but not necessarily with a single destination based on images/signs that only seem familiar, they should seem disorientating and open up a multitude of possible enriching experiences.
All of this seems a worthy ideal, but to stop the ink reacting with the aluminium plate and turning black is my immediate concern!
