Barbara Jay Bouman – Printmaking

I create monotypes, an intriguing hybrid of techniques that combine printmaking and painting. My focus is on combinations of subtle layered, implied textural surfaces using soft geometric order and random mark making while building up layers of translucent and opaque color. My work addresses proportion and balance with repeated gestures or forms that punctuate the other compositional elements. The monotype process appeals to me since unpredictable printmaking events occur that offset the control of my hand.

I work alone in my private 1300 square foot barn studio, north of Los Angeles in the San Emigdio Mountains. Each monotype is created on my Takach etching press with a 40″x72″press bed. I usually work on several pieces simultaneously, allowing a dialog to develop among pieces while exploring both experimental and deliberate actions.

Content evolves from a variety of expressions, deliberate thoughts and of previous experience, not literal or representational, but rather a response to subconscious and conscious process.

The work is always changing with both additive and subtractive techniques to cover up or expose previous layers of actions and marks. The quietly contemplative pieces shift focus from the structure and color to the subtleties of texture and layering, to suggest a history, a balance of intellect and senses.

My preoccupation is in the process of creating where the journey of rediscovery and re-evaluation of ideas occurs. I hope to capture the viewers’ interest and appreciation of both order and unpredictable occurrences we all experience in life and lead the mind into an awareness of minimal narrative content. New meanings are hinted at and the viewer is left with the depth, the surface and the characteristics of the materials to complete the picture in their own terms of exploration and judgment.