Animals without backbones

This body of work was inspired in part by a book of invertebrates and a children’s guide to sea shells. The drawings were completed during an artist-in-residence at Edenfred in Madison, WI in 2002. I was interested in making portraits of imagined organisms. I wanted to create a family album of sorts. I was interested in making drawings that appeared to be captured moments, like seeing something on a microscope slide, squinting an eye, a specific moment captured and then lost.

These paintings were created in small batches using primarily printmaking techniques to make marks in the wood’s surface. I drew through wet paint with rubber-tipped tools and scratched through layers of paint that had dried with etching needles and carving tools. I was interested in making a painting and preserving a quality that I love in printmaking – the sculptural aspect of the plate with the residue of grounds and etched surfaces. I was thinking about all the small beautiful details in our daily life that often go unnoticed: the spider up on the bookshelf, a lichen, a footprint and fuzzy lint. I wanted to collect all the small details and put them on wood to make them object-like, to make them memorable.