It’s almost 1:00 am, and I’m up after two hours of trying unsuccessfully to fall asleep. These bouts of insomnia come and go, so I accept it and indulge in a cup of herbal tea, some reading and making notes. My thoughts return to recent email conversations with virtual friend, fellow artist-blogger Karen D’Amico**. We’ve discussed many things that concern artists – art processes, writing proposals, the challenges of making gallerists and curators understand our visions, being authentic, enjoying the variety of views of artists-bloggers and so on.

Here are some excerpts (hope you don’t mind, Karen!):

Karen: “there is room for all different kinds of art, whether it be painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography or conceptual. To me, it’s about looking at the world and making a response… how that is done should not be limited”

M-L: “It’s funny how sometimes I feel my work is very deep and interesting and even somewhat leading edge in technique amongst printmakers at least, other times it seems so conservative! It depends on who looks at my work, whether that person has some knowledge of printmaking or not. Prints are not as highly regarded in the art world unfortunately, as are installation, video/new media and even painting.”

Karen: “understand what you mean about printmaking. i have done very little of it, due to facilities (lack of) in college and then the work went in other directions. i love the hands-on of it though, and really enjoyed monoprinting, which is about as far as i got. then they even got rid of that press – everything is all digital now, which i think is a great shame. i also love the materiality of work on paper. imprinting, making a mark… one of these days i would like to get more involved with it…”

M-L: “Yes, I love printmaking for the same reasons, plus the textures and wide variety of ways to make prints keep it exciting for me. I used to do a lot of drawing and originally fell in love with printmaking because it’s close to drawing. Monoprints are quick to do and closest to painting, something I get into sometimes when I’m in a hurry to get a lot of images and ideas down. Printmaking is darn slow! Though I’m doing some digital prints these days, I still like to combine them with the traditional print techniques to get that textured hand-made feel. I guess the subject matter (rocks) seems to call for it too.”

“Thanks Karen, for confirming my feeling that we must do what we must do, the only authentic way to work.”
As Karen said: “ain’t bloggin’ grand?”

Okay, now I think I’m ready for sleep!

** Reedited March 15th, 2013: Karen has not been at this blog address for some years, so link had been removed. I have now quite accidentally found her new eponymous website: Karen Ay