Shirley Scheier

Lives and works in Port Townsend, WA, USA

Artist statement

As I write,.. I’m using a pen on paper,…I understand these marks being made relate to communicative sounds between humans. When I am painting, printing, or drawing the marks are sifting my silence, clarifying, and sharing a sensorial experience. I use nets as a means of making marks on the canvas and also as image. A net is a means of collecting sustenance. I’m casting it across the canvas, searching for and catching the vitality and spirit I bring home from long sails and walks. The net as a mark-making tool gives shape to that intuitive understanding that defy my search for words. The image develops from a sensorial charged dance of bodily gestures. Painting is my respect for the innate knowledge held in and around the body. My creative practice is a weaving of painting, printmaking, and inspiration of the natural environment. Years of in-depth work with the very orderly steps of printmaking techniques revealed my lack of interest in edition de lux but my love of transformation through touch, rubbing and pressure. Separating the matrix from the expectation of reproduction, I embrace its generative ability to engage the stream of consciousness of my creative practice. A printmaker is essentially working in the dark when carving a block or working on the copper plate. They can’t really see the image, only imagine it as they work the surface. The image is reveled truly only after inking and printing. There is for me a joy, a great appreciation for this lack of control in...

Artwork