Michelle Avison

As an artist, I make sense of the world around me by looking at it. I am lucky- it is a gift to find interest in almost anything, to look at something, use it and look at it again, and again. The smallest things can reward a lot of looking, and my work now often references previous work, or even includes it, as in the Re-pool series of prints. I have fun with drawing, with using different materials, mixing things up, setting myself a challenge- to fill a sketchbook in a day, or by drawing only from the top of the page for example. I like responding quickly- to be forced to make quick decisions. I like drawing in the dark, when it is hard to see detail and one is forced to simplify and reduce to almost abstraction.

The recent Mare Ditat Series is based on paintings made by the sea in Norfolk. The monoprints, made back in the studio, are an accumulation of remembered experience, direct reference to the research material – drawings and paintings in a series of purpose-made sketchbooks- they use printmaking process to achieve marks that are not possible in painting alone.