Placeholder #7 Climbing, 2024

This landscape began like most others at DKW – I was given a plate to activate. I rarely know where to begin, so I have a few go-to symbols to help fill space – a landscape, a cross-section, a volcano, a cloud. As they fill the page the elements begin conversing with each other; sometimes it takes a few months before the image finds its way.

This one took a while. We first tried printing it on different colours of paper. We tried activating it with borders. The image just wasn’t strong enough. Eventually it began finding its way through a process of collage. By this point I’ve built up a large bank of collage elements at DKW. I move these around on the page until something clicks. I don’t always know why it clicks, but it will provoke some kind of an emotional response. That started happening with image when the colour started getting solved. It began resembling a vintage geology chart with faded earthy colours. We also added some chine layers and a great thing happened when did did a loose test print – the blue paper overlapped the beige and formed a type of shadow or aerial perspective. Three colours for the price of two! So in the next iteration we took that further and shaped it more. It stll felt a bit incomplete, so I tried a few elements in the margins – fragments from previous artworks that allude back to my Marginalia works. The margin elements are looser, more like side notes – after thoughts – than the more refined central image.

An image becomes alive when one is able to attach associations and memories to it. Landscapes are great carriers of these thoughts. So when I look at this piece I think about what I was thinking about and how much happened over the year it took for this final image to surface. Thoughts that aren’t quite resolved yet, but getting there.

-Nina Torr 2024