My art is largely project-based. Tied to a specific place and time.
This project dates from late summer of 2003. Most of the work was done at my friend Reidun's studio in Charlois, on the south side of the Maas, the river that cuts through Rotterdam. She was away all September and left me the key. I managed to fit in 2 or 3 sessions a week, sometimes with friends for company, usually alone. My aim was to produce new work for the "open day" at the end of the month, when artists in the area would open up their studios to the general public.
The resulting artworks reflect many of my earlier influences:
Still, I managed to create something wholly new.
I began by making a series of drawings. I sought a fresh angle and flowing and organic lines.
After a few sessions I had enough drawings and I was ready to make the monoprints.
I rolled out printing ink (Payne's grey) on a glass plate, fastened my drawing to the back of a clean sheet of A3 paper (190g medium grain) and traced the drawing with a pottery tool. The result was a copy of the drawing, in reverse, with softened lines in a charcoal, dusty black and the inevitable smudges, which give the monoprint its charm.
In some cases I stayed true to my original drawings, but in other instances the design evolved from one monoprint version to the next.
Initially I intended to add colour to the monoprints using marker pens. But the ink and the pens proved to be a bad mix. Happily I discovered an exciting alternative: turpentine, which turns the Payne's grey into a blue wash. That became the distinctive feature of the works I selected to display on the "open day".
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"Open Atelier Route" Charlois 2003
A Series of Monoprints by Irene Bom
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"Open Atelier Route" Charlois 2003
A Series of Monoprints by Irene Bom
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