taking a breather (gendered landscape all the same)

taking a breather: with everything that has been going on at the moment re physical and social distancing, landscape seems to be everywhere – a needed escape from the indoors that i keep obsessing over. confinement, or at least having to question where i could or should go, also seems to make me want to upscale my landscape work and explore the possibilities of small versus large scale. anyway, keeping on track for the moment, i have been spending my days researching and writing for my contextual study thesis about the gendering and regendering of landscape’s rectilinear frame. my progress is moving along at a slow but even pace and feel i am starting to make headway. this research is suggesting all sorts of ways to develop my physical making further and am looking forward to returning to making at the weekend, once the back of my thesis is broken.

printing: anyway, after a few consecutive days writing and researching, i thought i would take a breather from mental research and do some physical printing – even felt good to be physically measuring and cutting the paper again. i had spotted an open call for a small series of print work (up to 3 pieces) on the theme of the sea and as i had some images already edited into bitmaps, i thought i would play around with printing them in other sizes and colour combinations. without a premeditated plan, i found myself printing with the so called ‘gendered colours’ of blue and pink, which shouldn’t have  surprised me after all my recent research – so returning me once again to the gendering of landscape and landscape imagery, as if i could have left! some process images …

transparencies for exposure

inking up

finished editions (of 5)

reflection: i think there is a lot i could explore in terms of the gendered colours – not sure how yet – does it need some text of some kind – sugar and spice and all things nice? i like the horizontal ‘letter box’ format and think my next step is to explore this to a more extreme degree – as slivers (or threads) of landscape imagery that might not give enough visual information to let you know where you are are what you are looking at. this seems to tie in with the feeling of movement or ‘flux’ that has entered my work. i think this ‘sliver’ might be what i explore for making day next saturday.