Artwork review, 29/11/21, Rebecca Isabelle Guttormsen

My printmaking work is currently focused on people’s relationship with nature and how plastic pollution links in with our disconnection to nature. I chose this topic because I’m interested in the reason why we as people view ourselves as separate from nature, when we are in fact a part of it. Plastic pollution weighed into this when I considered some of the reasons why people have such a bad relationship with nature.

My work has a range of materials such as: cotton polyester fabric, newsprint, printing ink and various presses, cameras, papers, charcoal and graphite for drawing. The process I use for research is to look up the key information of the topic and look for artists that involve it in their practice. Then I research further into the context and gather sources to summarise into my own research. My artwork is related to nature and the effects plastic pollution has on it. I’m using this contextual research for my current printmaking practice. I’ve mostly printed on A2 and A3 sized backgrounds and made a large variety of prints from each technique.

Some artists I have looked at are: Andy Goldsworthy, Claire Burchell, Alexi Marshall, Daydreamers Design and Sybil Andrews. I’ve used a material other than paper to print onto that links to my theme of nature and plastic pollution, as cotton polyester blend fabric is made with plastic. I’ve used lino print because I wanted to have bold shapes and colours. On the fabric prints the colours didn’t come out as dark as I had intended, compared to the paper ones that came out very bold. The reasoning for this work was the symbolism of sunflowers (loyalty) and our loyalty to the earth and nature and how we can improve our relationship with nature, given that we are a part of it. The light interacts with the print by being absorbed, creating the shininess of the ink effect. The sunflower printed on the fabric needed more ink and a longer drying time, this would have made the colour come out stronger.