ARTIST'S STATEMENT

ELIZABETH D'AGOSTINO

 

My studio practice has evolved from the investigations of drawing and painting media to print media. I have been interested in the technical aspects of intaglio methods both traditional and photomechanical combined with screen-printing. Although I am interested in the practice of editioning prints, I am drawn to the research and development of the “varied unique print”. The majority if the prints I complete is a singular print numbered 1/1 and layered with numerous intaglio methods in order to generate a surface that demonstrates a relationship with the natural world.

I have been documenting the structure and setting of the city I reside in and am constantly reminded of familial sites and surroundings I encountered growing up. It embodies a sense of individual desire to recapture and restore memories and fragments of historical passages, which influence my daily life.

I am concerned with the notion of acclimation and how the environment begins to inform each other. As a child, I watched those around me form an ancestral and collective wholeness by grounding themselves with familiar and foreign ideas, which shaped their locale. The destination of one’s original place of birth leads me to the path of the extended sense of home, which is revealed in both animate and inanimate objects. This concept has multiple meanings, going beyond a shelter; relating to an individual’s stability in his/her relationships, and their surroundings that often dictate their day-to-day functions. Narrative devices derived from a generation of specific traditions, cultural domestic systems and patterns that are affected by continual growth and change are often depicted as backdrops or motifs printed onto paper, they are common examples repeated in order much like landscape. They are used to adorn the surfaces of many objects or “things” and are often collected, stored, displayed and passed on.

I am interested in components familiar with particular landscapes and specific facets of nature, interwoven into new settings. I continue to document details of growth while many of these elements are drawn up through imagination producing new oddities of growth, complex root systems and hybridized forms of nature. .