book page drawings; process and examples
For the past couple of years I’ve been making poems/drawings from old (and pretty outdated by todays standards) book pages from my late mother’s torn and tired books.I think I like/need the constraint of an already worked on page...
I begin by creating (an almost)fresh white page with paint, working around the elements and words I choose to retain. Both text and drawings use the blackout (or whiteout in most cases) technique; I change nothing in the text except to reorder the words by erasure, and do the same for the images which I rework over several subsequent layers.
Then I bring in colour, doodling around then embellishing the pages with their bits of text and 'salvaged' monochrome images (I have accepted to transgress the taboo of drawing in/on the revered ‘book’ that every child experiences!) slowly making them into something that I consider harmonious and new. I often find myself bringing elements relegated to the background into the foreground, and dare to work with the iconic images of madonnas, angels and virgins, somehow wishing to restore/represent them to our contemporary consciousness as well as propose the possibility for them to become actors of their own image, retroactively.
I see the works as versions, re-visions, engaged in the work of salvaging something from the page before they are completely lost. I version versions of versions, in an ongoing work of perpetual variation that travels further and further from source ( yet is always a result of that source) I love to be surprised by what can emerge, the defamiliarisation of language that happens and chance image that can occur.
I frame, show and sell these re-visions which are are reproduced in limited series of 10 examples per variation. Here's a selection of the latest ones...
