Diana Ashdown
I am primarily a printmaker experimenting and devising different print techniques with lino, collagraph and eco prints, exploring texture and colour combinations. I use both surfaces (intaglio and relief) of the lino or collagraph matrix for focal depth, overlaying sympathetic colours to bring my ideas to fruition.
A starting point for this work was finding my Mothers flower press with flowers still in it, unknowingly, illicitly gathered from holidays abroad.
This body of work encompasses the historic idea of collection and preservation with the contempory use of modern day materials, concepts and techniques. I am exploring through the medium of print, our changing memory of places visited, seeming to trap plant shadows as they fall onto surfaces, like a print, showing their fragility, in essence ‘Collecting Memories’. I have achieved this by walking in specific places rich in wild flowers, noting dates, collecting, pressing and arranging them on solar plates.
The magic comes when I work the plates trying to get the best from them, carefully choosing colours, various treatments, overlaying the prints with many runs through the press, enjoying the richness of texture and shapes of the material I have collected.
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