Original artwork description:

This painting/ monotype explores a painting by El Greco. I spent six months travelling around Spain in 2014 on an art pilgrimage and residency - during this time I spent a lot of time exploring the work of El Greco, visiting his town of residency Toledo.

These monotype paintings are exploring a variety of paintings by those I enjoy re-seeing, exploring the artist's ways of working and producing their paintings from the past, re-exploring their techniques in colour, form and composition.

This painting/ monoprint is one of several images investigating the Saint Mary Magdalen, who I personally believe was chosen as First Minister by the Christos to continue his teachings, before being sidelined - but that is another tale.

I have applied the techniques of painting the image in waterbased printing inks and then pressed through a printing press onto Rosapina Fabriano paper, experimenting ways of pressing the image either directly onto a dry surface or onto damp or wet paper surfaces to form entropic states of image making. This image is one of two, forming a ghost image.

These reveal accidental and chance elements into the work that correspond to thoughts and current events happening during their making, whilst referring back to the history of art and the history of painting and printing.

Materials used:

Waterbased Printing Ink on Rosapina Fabriano Paper

Tags:

#portrait #painting #print #faces #religious #portraiture #figures #religion #monotype #printing #st mary #el greco #mannerist #elgreco #mary magdalen