WATERPRINTS on CLOTH

embodied creativity, a state of mind

     I love the spontaneous intuitive and embodied action of abstract expressionism. It speaks to me of freedom, the freedom to act, the freedom to speak, move with my emotions and imagine with abandon. When I discovered hydroprinting over a decade ago, I was hooked. Printing on water can be traced  to 12th century China and Japan where it is known as suminagashi, a form of artistry focused on creating repeatable patterns. In 15th century Persia floral motifs drawn from floating pigment took on the name  of abri,              meaning cloud art.

There is something irresistibly hypnotic about the liquid canvas that charms, mesmerizes the senses and leads to a certain rêverie just like gazing at the sky. It is a living canvas. Departing from traditional approaches for me it is like a doorway, an invitation to kick off my shoes and play. It is a remembering of the alluring vital quality of deep connection with the moment, danced in its wholeness, un-apologetic and open hearted.

         The soft, responsive and tender nature of water effortlessly invites creative partnering. Gone is the fear of the white page as fluidity instantly participates in the mark making adventure. Dribbled paint like droplets of moving colors drift, disperse and collide sending ripples across the surface in enchanting sensuous rhythms. Free falling as a diving bird from the mouth of an eye-dropper the drop dashes, thumps the surface and spreads. It can be directed, shaped or left alone. From close up to the surface, as if cheek to cheek, one’s very breath can deliberately yet delicately influence it’s trajectory. From further away, color can be shaken, splashed, and flung. Gestures, rhythms and intensities offer the tangible promise of endless embodied conversations as a dance with water. 

Initially, quiet, still and clear the mirror like surface responds to the impulses and moods of the painter revealing a world that belongs as much to one as the other. A co-creative relationship emerges much like the sky sponsoring weather patterns from wispy clouds to storms. Imagine under your very eyes, shapes in constant motion drawing themselves, until an inner conviction calls to urgently cover the slippery scene. Deliberately, delicately a piece of cloth draped on water captures the fleeting moment and, as the colors soak into the woven threads like unto an imaginary garment appears the refection of your own creative soul, enigmatic, poetic and haiku like.

Sometimes, a single gesture says it all. Other times, the print hangs in the studio for weeks, stubbornly asking for something more that cannot be named or articulated. Some days you come face to face utterly puzzled, some days you pick the unfinished cloth up and turn it upside down or sideways again and again and then, there are those days when you just walk past each other scratching your head in some odd way dancing the question moment by moment until… suddenly an instinct arises as a shapeless knowing below the surface. Tenderly, fiercely, playfully you pick up the colors, by the water’s edge, under a cloudless sky something turns you around and takes you home free again to imagine the unnameable with total abandon.