Featuring Veiled Prints by George Woollard
Patterns can be significant as parts are to a puzzle. It is a game of relationships that allow for some maneuvering, some placement and design that is dynamic like nature but also analytical like the human mind. It is this dual purpose, to be at once familiar and surprising that interests me.
The plates are made of plexiglass and built up with acrylic gel medium using stamps made from found objects. Maybe you see the bathroom tiles or CD spacers I used, or maybe it looks like pineapple slices. I want the pieces to be playful. I want them to engage you in a kind of three dimensional chess, patterns that move left to right and also top to bottom. The colors, textures and shapes can be combined and recombined in innumerably different ways as all the plates in the series, of which there are many more, are all made to be divisible by three inches. (9×12, 3×6, 18×24).
To make it even more interesting, I asked my printmaking class (Discovering Prints, HMAS) to each contribute at least one plate that anyone else in the class could use. The students and myself included in effect became parts in a larger puzzle. I like this ambiguity of identities. If it seems to me, that the most interesting works are the ones that challenge definitions. If it does not look like anything you know then it is more likely to be original. The quality of originality is what drives art and society forward. Therefor, I actively seek a look that falls between the cracks. These works are somewhere between printmaking, collage and painting and have sculptural qualities as well.
