Experiments in Abstraction

As someone relatively new to printmaking the capabilities, flexibility and perhaps most importantly of all the unexpected nature of the result have given me an additional dimension to my art.

My interest is in abstraction as this gives me unlimited opportunities to explore new shapes, colours, tonality, textures, processes and interactions. I am always eager to experiment and do not believe in conforming to convention, style or fashion. The result is an eclectic mix of work over the past two years.

The exhibition also reflects the progression in the printmaking studio from simple monoprinting applying paint directly to the screenprint plate to the manipulation of original artwork to extract sub-sections that provide a totally different look and feel to the original. The use of modern digital techniques combined with traditional printmaking processes makes for an interesting combination but one which works surprisingly well. Not least because the extraction and manipulation of images can effectively produce a new work and indeed a new genre for the artist to pursue.

The prints “Shrouded in Doubt” and “The Shimmering” are good examples of this when compared with the original work “Circles of the Mind”.

Hence one of the main aims of the exhibition is to illustrate how original art can be developed in the printmaking studio to produce several derivatives which are very often surprisingly different.

In more general terms the exhibition shows my fascination with multi-coloured images and free flowing shapes. More often than not these works are driven by instinct rather than by design. But somewhat contradictory the wide range of colours used provides fertile material for grey scale and black and white images due to the differences in tone and texture in the original image. Again this illustrates the hidden opportunities with the printmaking process.

I do not see printmaking as a competitor to other art forms rather as a means of working in conjunction and in a complementary way to the benefit of both creative processes.

For more information, visits www.michaelhillart.co.uk