Olivia Smyth

I am a printmaker. My practice is lithography; an alchemy between ink and water, a balance of chemical processing, patience, and attention. My subject is also a printmaker: my series of works examine the Liquidambar tree and the broader concepts of nature as durational copyist, and subjective body. Working direct-to-stone, and plate, I manipulate lithographic tusche to create delicate and textural works which evoke the bodily, the natural, and the sensorial.
Examining the tree as a conceptual printmaker, I engage with the cycles of nature which exist in parallel to the processes and repetitions of printmaking, and the durational rituals of lithography. Reflecting on the ways in which architecture frames our experience of nature, I create windows which integrate the natural into the gallery, just as this tree was consciously articulated into the design of my home. My resulting works translate this tree with four trunks into fractal prints, branching across picture planes.