Ways with Silk

I started working with silk prints for an unexpected reason: I sold a painting, and I found I missed its company. So I started thinking about how I could preserve the memory of a painting, the different ways I could reprint it.

What I loved about printing onto silk was that the painting took on a new life. The mirror repeat created new images, the sheen of the silk added lustre to the colours, the drape of the fabric gave a new delicacy and versatility. The painting becomes miniaturised, tiny versions repeating and unfolding across the surface. The silk is so delicate, your movement makes it ripples and float - the original painting was substantive, while this silk is as light as air.

This silk pictured above is a mirrored and repeated version of an original painting called ‘How Does That Make You Feel?’. The painting was tied up with ideas about the layers of memory that are excavated during psychoanalysis - so it seems appropriate that the mirrored prints have begun to look like Rorschach images. I find it intriguing that even though I created the original painting, I find it hard to locate it within this patterned silk - the mirrored edges have become so much a point of focus, the original centre is difficult to find.