Other Media on paper

Signed on the front.

I love working with paper for its versatility, absorbing quality and the endless washes, imprints and layers that it can take on. Usually I work with watercolour or acrylics, and later I add textures with pencils, charcoals & pastels. While drawing on plein air sessions, I love to stain paper with dirt, ashes, grasses and further work on it with other mediums.
For the woven paper works I create a diptych of 2 related drawings. I hold in mind the themes and colour ranges that would blend well together. Sometimes these diptyches stay as they are, but sometimes I go further by cutting & weaving them together. The weaving aspect adds another dimension and gives the works textural richness, playfulness and intrigue. I enjoy introducing some level of spontaneity and controlled unpredictability into the process, which challenges our perceptions and melts a boundary between certainty & uncertainty, control & letting go, defined and undefined.
Abstract visual expression resonates with me. Therefore, I often deconstruct the obvious visual representation and conceal and encode it behind abstract repetitive patterns. It gives the mind freedom to imagine, be intrigued and explore the unknown. The abstract visual invites us to put our logic aside and enter the realm of imagination, where we are led by feelings & associations, rather than logical analysis.
This woven series came around 10 years ago, when I revisited my old drawings in the attic. Some of these drawings were beautiful and interesting, but too incomplete or unresolved to stand on their own. I decided to recycle them by cutting & weaving them together. I enjoyed the process and was also satisfied with the tangible woven surfaces which contained abstraction in a lovely woven structure, exploring the idea of the opposites. This combination of contemporary abstract drawing and the traditional, centuries old craft of weaving pulls me to explore experimental and new techniques further and at the same time respect the hands- on traditional drawing process.