Over the last few months the focus of my art practice has moved from the traces of other people’s lives to a different, yet connected, narrative about the marks that I leave behind.
In the old diaries I had been working with I found X marks. They seemed to represent something but I didn't know what. Their significance has long been lost but they must have had some meaning and purpose to the person who made them.
I started to make my own X marks whilst experimenting with carborundum and drypoint printing, the former giving a really nice gritty grainy texture to the marks, the latter much more scratchy.
Carborundum print (actual size 9 x 6.5cm)
I am making Xs
An X has many connotations
X = yes
X = no
X = wrong
X marks the spot
X = love
X crosses out
X obliterates or maybe it doesn’t – I can still see what’s underneath
X indicates
X invalidates
X is a secret code
X is different every time I make an X
X votes
X = for
X = against
X means different things in different situations and to different people
Carborundum plates ready to either blind emboss (to make an impression without ink) or to ink and print.
I decided to work on a small scale, something I'm not used to doing, and cut the metal plates in to the size of playing cards. I like this as a symbol of the game of chance that we call life; each decision, each thought and encounter is a part of what makes us who we are. we are changing moment by moment. Just as no two prints I make are ever identical, I am never exactly the same person as I ever was before or will ever be again.
