September 19, 2011 - September 23, 2011
Artist's studio
Printed at The Artists Press, White River, Mpumalanga
Not formally exhibited
The Twelve Moths of Mourning
The Twelve Moths of Mourning suite was triggered by a chance message. My loss had been twofold – the death of a close friend and the withdrawal from anything that had made the past pleasurable by his partner, an equally close friend.
I had explored this loss in the first suite of 12 watercolour monotypes, Cataclysm/Catalyst, where I looked at 12 emotive words to describe the process of mourning, and found a shape to indicate that word. This tied in with the traditional Greek mourning passage.
On the 8-month anniversary of my friend’s death, his partner sent me a text message meaning to say “8 months ago today …” but inadvertently typed in the word ‘moths’. This seemingly insignificant misspelling caused me to think of certain associations with moths, such as twilight and dimness, disintegration, and metamorphosis, and to consider creating a further suite of 12 monotypes, The Twelve Moths of Mourning.
So much of my artmaking has been brought about by serendipity. As well, at the time I was learning bookbinding under Peter Carstens, and on hearing of my new direction he leant me an exquisitely illustrated antique copy of a book about moths. Shortly afterwards, I was fortunate enough to be attending a week-long lithographic monotype workshop with Mark Attwood at The Artists Press in White River. This became my project for the week.
By using a lithographic stencil monotype technique, solid, rock-like forms of these shapes evolved on the 12 perspex plates. Before printing, within each shape I excavated the image of a different species of moth with a finely pointed tool, each manipulated into its awkward space.
My suggestion here was that loss and mourning never leave the bereaved but remain in their depths in a fossil-like form.
A NOTE:
Since the images are small on the paper - the composition (size and placing) of the images was important to me - I have just provided here a close-up of each image, rather than the full work.
