I should start by saying that parts of this video are intended to be a parody on printmaking. I also want to offer this disclaimer. Don’t try this at home and don’t drink the acid. What appears to be acid in the video is actually Icy Blue Gatorade.

Basically the video is about printmaking as metaphor for actions and as a way of looking at the world. In that the activities of everyday life however banal have meaning and mythic presence that permeates our experiences. From the minute to the hour to the year the tasks of life have meaning, through ritual and repetition even the ordinary experiences such as, opening a milk carton or pushing a shopping cart represent a shared cultural myth. Alchemists of the past used a complex mythos conjoined with a science of elements. Not unlike an alchemist deciphering and manipulating the world, we use science on an everyday basis; from household cleaning products to fossil fuels and base metals. Like these alchemists I am trying to decipher life and decode the symbolic meaning of our life through art and technology.

I am interested in our relationship with nature and our struggle with the de-enchantment of the world viewed through science. I am also interested in chance and how it affects the everyday narrative; fantastic or ordinary each day is invariably unique despite menial repetition or the malaise of sameness. Transversely, each day reproduces a likeness of the day before, to greater and lesser degrees.

So for me, a printmaker, it is worthwhile to think about the act of making a print in these terms.

For example, in splices of the video you see scenes of a man walking in the snow – making a line in the snow. These scenes are based on real experiences and memories. As a kid growing up in South Dakota I remember a lot of snow, it snowed all the time, I mean we would have snow like 8 months out of the year. Ironically I never ceased to be enchanted by the first snow fall or even a fresh snowfall. I couldn’t wait to walk in it.

To leave my mark – proof of my path.

I remember always looking back at my footprints and enjoying the freshness of their marks on the bright white ground. In contrast to that feeling of wonder, I also felt sorrow, a strange sadness for the defilement of this natural purity. This blanket of crystal goodness that covered our everyday world would soon become all tracked up.

‘Drawing Lawrence’ touches light, dark moments in history Photo Gallery: ‘Drawing Lawrence’

Printmaking is at times a destructive act, a pathological repetition.

Taking away, blocking out, eating away, biting, cutting and the gouging away of some pristine surface, this is the destructive nature of printmaking.

So that’s just one element that I wanted to inject into the video, something personal and really reflective but also metaphorical. Perhaps it is too obtuse to convey my own personal connection to printmaking. But the snow sequences are also just about making prints in the snow. I think that we, those of us who chose to use this medium, have a meaningful connection to the process and that perhaps our migrating to printmaking was not so much of a choice but a necessity.

I am always reminded of the first prints, at least what I consider to be the first recorded prints. I am talking about the hand prints in the caves of Lascaux, some of which I guess you could also argue are paintings, the simple dipping of the hand in paint and slapping it on the wall, but the stenciled hands are defiantly prints. And the people who made them had the need, the desire, the want or perhaps the instinct to make prints. That for me is proof that this medium is fundamental to art, it is fundamental to our world.

By doing physical things you better understand the world and yourself. Traditional print practices are linked to the body and grow out of an organic need to stimulate self-discovery through certain kinds of physical activities.

For me, this is where the teaching needs to start.

Printmaking is not an ancient medium, or a post-modern medium, or a technological medium but an essential medium that is connected to our everyday life. It’s just harder to see that or understand that these days, than it was 15,000 years ago.

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