Kirsten Lockie

From fine shading to crystalline transparency.

Undeniably an extraordinary technique with infinite avenues to explore.

I have found the monoprint technique the most exciting of all the calligraphic printmaking mediums. 

 Moving ink on metal is more a dance form than a rendition.

It allows spontaneity and surprise like no other discipline expressed on paper. Finding solutions in the twist of ones wrist, smudge of a line, stroke of lace, and so on to infinity has opened the doors to one creative conclusion after another.

This technique caught me off guard and showed me another way of working. It has made me a fearless painter; to paint as one feels, to give it ones all during the action of doing,

 in the knowledge that the outcome will be turned. In using the word “turned” I refer to the process.

 After working on a piece with relentless and total involvement,

 the image is then printed through the tight rollers of the press.

The felts are lifted back and the embossed paper peeled away from the plate.

 Naturally the image has been transferred onto the paper in mirror image. 

 In that very process a type of alchemy transpires,

ones relationship, ones perspective of the piece;like the image itself is "turned".

 In that simple act of transferring image to paper one finds that one is no longer

 the involved doer but the detached viewer.

One leaves behind the voyage and stands looking at a new experience.

 Every time a refreshing thrill, amusing to the core.

Working in an environment of this kind one can only expand with the creative process.

 I was recently asked what inspires me. Once I might have said light and reflections, the door, water, human nature, the concept of time, the fountain, visions seen in casual shades…and so on, now I would say… “inspiration itself”. The breadth it brings, the infinite ideas which overflow in its presence is wonderful. The fearless painter comes from that turning viewpoint,

letting the spontaneity of the moment bring the conclusion of one piece to the inspiration of the next.

The monoprint process allows the making of just one print per plate,

a statement in itself regards mass production.

Cleaning ones plate after printing an image,

holds the secrets of impermanency in a solvent saturated rag.