INK SERIES

Caroline Rannersberger

2016-17

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METHOD

I apply acrylic and shellac based water soluble inks with acrylic medium. I then interchange with shellac to create an erosive reaction.  I lie the works flat and pour the medium/paint/ink over the linen. I don't use brushes, but allow the mediums to 'cook' and find their own form. This creates ripples, cracks, waves of paint on the surface, which I like to think of as an echo of geomorphological processes. The final layer is sealed with acrylic medium. 

CONCEPT

There is a strong allusion to the landscape creating itself, and this in some ways goes back to my years in Arnhem Land/ NT (2001-2011) listening to Indigenous artists speak of their work (and of course their culture) in metaphysical terms. It is important to me that  my work creates itself without direct control; a sort of tripartite dissolution between the painter, the painted (subject) and the painting itself (medium). Essentially this is a phenomenological approach but I am strongly influenced by the writings of Gilles Deleuze who takes this much further. This is discussed in "Metaphysical Territory", an article I wrote for Art Monthly. 

COLOUR

The colour is a whole other - and much more recent - concept concerned with alchemical reactions. I loosely reference colour from early antiquity, as discussed in my artist statement for the "Illuminous" exhibition in Melbourne earlier this year. Colour for me is a reflection of a sensation; an experience. In antiquity this was directly linked to physical and corporeal sensations, like black/nigredo for bile and albumen for white etc. For me this is linked to the land as if it is a living breathing organism - with the geomorphological reactions transcending change at an elemental level. 

MILIEU

In very direct terms, I paint what I experience when kayaking around the coastal regions near my home on Bruny, or looking across the water to the southern Tasmanian mountain ranges; gazing into the ocean depths and then looking across to the shore/ hills/ mountains. From the kayak I see the deep sea green and brown kelp swaying with the wave motion. The brilliant green sea lettuce is particularly spectacular at low tide as it spreads itself across the rocky coastal environment. Or else I move further ashore where submerged dolerite outcrops appear as dark caves lit by sudden bursts of sunlight illuminating ocean garden beds.

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