Explore the houses with the different impressions
The Art of Monotype Printmaking
I appreciate the craftsmanship of printmaking. It forces me to slow down and think through which steps I want to/need to take to come to the results I am after. I actually started working in Blender, 3D software, to make models for games. However, I never was a gamer myself and that industry is in shackles, hence I started to use those skills and bridge them to physical pieces of art. There are already so many wonderful artists who make work digitally and sell printed reproductions from them. I was considering doing the same actually, however I decided against it because I value the constraints of printmaking more, and at the same time I avoid being sucked in the whole AI debate.
I spend considerable time behind the computer still. I use hours to prepare the houses, model them from real world references, texture them somehow realistically before turning black and white images from them. These are the only prints coming out of a printer as I transfer the black and white images on the gel plate. Once the image is transferred, I start applying paint using brushes, brayers, and I even airbrush parts as I want to have a certain consistency in smaller areas and that is something a brush or roller doesn’t provide. I apply layer after layer, from detailed foregrounds to larger backgrounds before the impression is pressed on paper.
Doing it manually gives pleasure as each time I pull the paper off the plate, the impression is unique and can’t be replicated. From each house, the structure remains the same, but its atmosphere changes each time, much like memory itself. That makes each impression unique. I do use the same image of the same house several times. However, they never will be identical due to how paint is applied. Sometimes it’s a bit thicker, thinner, spread more to the left or right, or I choose not to clean up remaining pieces of paint I could have. All those differences give each print a different character.
My current body of work begins with the Rumah Kutai of Perak, Malaysia, though the questions behind the work reach far beyond a single country or culture. Wherever people have built homes that grew from their landscape and community, I see stories worth preserving and values worth reflecting upon. After Malaysia my journey will go to different parts of the world, to keep on telling stories people can connect with.
Through my work, I invite viewers to pause, reflect and ask themselves what makes a place feel like home, and what is worth carrying with us into the future.
From here you can explore all prints from all series, which I will go through a bit more.