Nets are useful objects, freighted with symbolic meaning.

 

When I first found a piece of fish netting last year it suggested entrapment—the essence of the human condition, it seemed to me.

 

That net, and many others, became printing tools. 

The ink (or paint)-drenched imprint of netting suggests a powerful reality. Using the structure it provides I may react against it, erase it, paint over it, create negative or positive spaces, layers--or I may treat it as an entity in its own right. 

 

As I explored techniques and their effects, the appearance and the meaning of the net kept changing.

 

The net as instrument of entrapment, which I had initially been railing against, then relegated to a number of different roles, gradually moved to center stage and acquired a life of its own: It simply was. There were even moments when I felt that I “was” the net, or that the net had “become” the “fish”. Or that the net was simply a pervasive presence, connecting everything.

 

Throughout all these transformations, the netting still represents the human condition, I believe. What has changed is the artist’s perspective.