STATEMENT

ANIMA :
animating principle, vital force, soul, spirit, psyche

MEDIA: water + pigment + paper + gesture + pressure + gravity + time

In this recent series of monoprints, I’ve been investigating the way I make marks  and what happens when time and chance are invited into the process.  I combine different amounts of ink or paint and water, pigment of bone or vine, with more or less density, on surfaces of paper or vellum.  I fold the paper, add varying amounts of pressure using my nails or whole palm to make gestures.   I then observe how gravity and time operate on these images, and repeat some of the processes.  Finally, I scan and enlarge the ones that fascinate me into body-sized digital prints.

Like the veins in our bodies, roots of plants, layers of bone and rock, these natural forms emerge clearly from the very processes that nature uses. I find their meta-patterns provocative, enigmatic, compelling, more complicated than I can envision. They fill me with a sense of awe before their visual coherence–the logic and elegance of nature.
These Anima drawings are the result of my movements and decisions, as well as the pull of gravity and pressure on pigment. They remind me of the aerial landscapes I used to paint, and yet they also seem to become figures we can all relate to as living beings. They can be metaphors for perception and memories stored in our collective psyches, but none of us sees the same image in precisely the same way. I am intrigued by this ambiguity and mystery.

Sally Weare