Description

Judith Stroud | Endless Round 1 | AP | 60 x 44 cm | £95.00

The series of collagraphs  Endless Round  suggests to me cycles of life, and the bigger picture of the movement of planets and stars in our solar system.

It was initially inspired by the intricate and tortuous textures of roots I discovered on repotting a bay tree after many years neglect. The tangled growth seemed endless and it took many hours to glue the roots to a base to create the collagraph.

The fractured crystalline texture comes from broken eggshells adhered to the base plate, to suggest the shifting of tectonic plates, and the creation of new worlds.

Collagraph is a printmaking technique which operates, as the name suggests, on the basis of collage. The physical activity involved in creating a collagraph plate is the interaction with a selection of materials of varying textures. It is a particularly robust, direct and unfussy type of printmaking and the surfaces created are relatively unpredictable. Indeed, much of the joy of working with collagraph lies in the tremendous scope there is for innovation and experiment.

The nature and breadth of Collagraph as a means of creating uniquely rich and interesting printed imagery makes it one of the most dynamic innovations to take place within printmaking in recent decades. Unlike other intaglio and relief methods, which rely on a set of one or more highly technical processes, Collagraph is a process which enables you to work directly with materials, and to explore the qualities of those materials.

The collagraph plate can be made from ‘liquid’ materials, which are painted on to the plate or applied in a liquid or semi-liquid form, with a brush, palette knife or squeegee, such as PVA glue, ceramic tile cement or epoxy resin or from materials which are cut-out and glued down, for example, tissue paper gauze, scrim and fabric.