I’m getting my studio ready for our Open Studio event. Here is one of the works I’ll be showing in my studio. 'Fern’ is made by a transfer method: I made colour laser photocopies from a photograph of my painting 'Blaze', enlarging its size. Then I drew and cut a fern shape from the photocopy and transferred it, using acrylic medium, onto a sheet of Japanese tissue with a spiral pattern. The Japanese tissue is semi-translucent and the spirals of the paper appear through the fern. I chose the paper because of its fragility and spiral pattern; many ferns grow in spiral formations.
The process of transferring the image increases the fragility of the paper and the image: after transferring, the paper is removed from the back of the photocopy using water and rubbing to dissolve it, leaving a thin layer of dry toner and the film of the acrylic medium. The resulting image is literally a residue.
