Blog on Tutor" Emma Mclellan"

2009-11-01T01:50:00.000-07:00

Emma gave a talk about her art practice of printmaking and painting for the past ten years. Her work has evolved into some exquisite works. She has been inspired by artist William Morris. His designs on textiles and wallpaper. His life spanned sixtyfive years and he was very artistically prolific. Along with other artistic expression he was the single most influencial designer of the 19th entury. Alongside new interpretations using new printing and weaving technology methods "Morris and Co" created todays styles in fabric and wallpaper designs that are timeless in appeal, some of which Emma has appropriated from. These patterns are used in a matrix like way which is also a metaphor for the DNA and repetativeness used in the background patterns to Mclellan's works.

I am really inspired by her referance to Morris and although I am new to a lot of these methods I feel strongly enough to want to work with some similar patterning to my works . Already I have gathered wallpapers from Levenes as future resource material to my art practice.

I have read the artical by Delwyn Archer the Print technician at MIT which questions where Mclellan's art is placed in genre. I strongly feel that Emma Mclellan's work is both painterly prints and printed paintings. I feel that we humans categorise so as to better understand concepts and technologies by grouping them under headings but where is the rule that we have to stick ridgedly to the categories. Why not call her art "printerlies". That is a style that pertains to her. The dictionary is forever changing with new submissions and new dictionaries are coming out every now and then and so too artspeake can also be challenged and change with the times.

Some of her work is quite organic in mark making and she makes the most out of "happy mistakes". I like that process as compared to the perfection in paint and line. It shows individuality and uniqueness. I feel that a work of art can be satisfyingly resolved even though it is born out of mistakes.

Emma stated that Patricia Piccinnie's explanation and stance on Genetic engineering has inspired and captured her imagination. Puccinni portrays wierd and even funny images of animals that are part one type of animal and part another. These are very realistic images giving the viewer the notion that they are the result of experiments gone wrong in laboritories. They were of photoshop in appearance and clinically perfect. If they weren' t so funny and even endearing at times they would be horrific in viewing and it starts one questioning the place of genetic engineering. The famous cloned sheep, "Dolly the sheep" was perfect in appearance but only lived to half the age span for that breed of sheep which is not a commonly known fact. What implications does that hold for the human race while we are trying to eliminate diseases in our genetics. Mclellan's work asks that question for me.

Emma stated that she liked the ease of replication in printmaking. But that poses the question of printmaking when art school is finished. The machinery needed for this process is very expensive and requires a lot of room. I know there are facilities outside of art school such as Artstation and those spaces need to be booked and hired.

For me it always comes back to the passion of printmaking and the painterly process.

Mclellan's work has evolved over the years and she is teaching as well as having her own professional art practice. It surely teaches that with demands on daily personal time, with organisation a person can support themselves financially and also have a professional art practice.

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Blog on Tutor" Emma Mclellan"