night map series

untitled: (night map) minaki series, no. 4 India ink, graphite, bronze powder, watercolour, builder’s chalk, oxide, earth, & varnishes on blind-embossed paper, 213 x 60 cm

untitled: (night map) minaki series, no. 4 (detail)

The present is never uncoloured by the past, be it a collective, or particular set of experiences. Night Map evolves as a series of meditations on places or situations that have marked the psyche of the artist in some way during the process of claiming the emotional territory of being in the world.

Initially, blind embossings have been taken from their physical locations, beaten into the paper with a rubber mallet. Particular materials have been selected and applied in layerings of gestures that in some cases clarify the impressions, and in others obfuscate or change them. The media are chosen for their associations as much as for their ability to delineate. For example, red carpenters’chalk is used to define starting points, datum, or cut lines, etc. The iron oxide pigment is that which colours blood, let at conception, and in battle. India ink is traditionally used for the keeping of permanent records; graphite is used to make calculations and plans; lead is used to protect, to destroy, to poison, or to measure weight; varnishes both preserve and isolate that which lies beneath.

The activity of layering both realizes and references the passage of time. It is by sifting through the layers that the viewer becomes part of the process.