Linoleum Prints
My focus in my Visual Arts program in university was printmaking. However, I worked almost exclusively with intaglio (metal plates) and didn’t start using other printing methods until 2017 when I took a printmaking class while living in Doha, Qatar.
I love linoleum as a medium for the texture and the hand-made quality that the prints have. I also love the feeling of working on the drawing and the plate for a long time but not fully knowing what the final product will look like until I run the print. I have an idea, of course, but there are special marks that I cannot predict and the final image is a flipped image of what I’ve been working on. It’s always an exciting reveal!
Dos Corazones
Linocut on Bristol board
30 x 42 cm
2021
“Selva” Series
For a while now I’ve been very interested in decorative patterns. I’ve been observing and taking pictures of wallpapers, tiles, islamic designs around Doha, etc, and thinking about how to incorporate them into my work and, more importantly, how to create my own.
I am especially drawn to patterns that play with symmetry to create endless repetitions of decorative shapes. Patterns that are made in pieces, like tiles, create designs not just inside each piece but in the places where the pieces meet. As beautiful as a single tile can be, the design in its full glory is not revealed until all the pieces are put together. This is what I wanted to play with, and where the idea for the “Selva” series came from.
For this series, I created two tiles that mirrored each other and could be combined in four different ways. When printed, there are even more combinations that result depending on how the first tile is placed. I wasn’t able to fully imagine all these combinations and their results when I first designed the tile. For me, that is a big part of the beauty of this series.