ARTIST STATEMENT
I have been investigating darkfield monotype printmaking as part of my process for the past two years with Neil Berger at The Inkshop in Ithaca New York. This printmaking method is unique, challenging and richly rewarding for many reasons. To quote David Wilson Hawkins, an artist and printmaker in Virginia, “The thing that fascinates and perplexes me about dark field monotypes is precisely this: it is only through the conscientious removal and sustained absence of one thing that the presence of another is brought into being”.
The monotype process also makes me feel connected to the work intimately, moving ink around on the plexiglass plate, using my hands, cloth and stylus to subtract some here, and add texture there. Monotypes insist on decisive but thoughtful mark making and subtraction. The fluidity of the medium allows me a certain “athleticism” as Neil Berger refers to it, when reaching for form. The vast and rich scale of tonal values and simplified forms that can be wrought is provocative incentive for an almost obsessive search for light and form.
I have traveled to places where the landscape has resonated with me and where I have experienced moments of insight regarding light and form. Even in the everyday act of cutting open an avocado, I find it is the persistence of light and shadow that drives the chase. These prints reflect my memories and experiences of those moments. I have engaged in meticulous, detail oriented botanical painting in the past. However, this has been an effort to move away from the particulars and simplify form, caught in fleeting moments, with both subtle and dramatic light.
BIO
Peg Donahue lives and works as an artist in Cooperstown, NY. She graduated Magna cum laude from Rutgers University with a BA in Studio Art, Binghamton University with an MA in Education and Museum Studies and the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School, with an MFA in Illustration. She also studied at The Rhode Island School of Design and Cornell Plantations at Cornell University.
