Martha Jeffrey Galuszka
Following a varied career teaching art and working in graphic design businesses I recently returned to art-making full time and experimented with printmaking, including lithography, etching and relief. There is a direct corollary between the skills I honed in the graphic arts and the challenges of printmaking, and I literally fell in love with the processes, the materials, the tools, and the press. I sometimes combine the traditional techniques with digital photography and printing, using whichever methods help to resolve the image.
Often the simplest, most direct way to print is to make a Monoprint. Working with thin layers of color is similar to making a watercolor painting, with many of the same issues in preserving the lights and developing the darks. The colors are rarely predetermined, but are discovered along with the process of careful layering, printing, and adding more layers as the print evolves. A typical monoprint may require 20 or more layers of ink, and there is only one final piece of art, comparable to an individual watercolor painting. When I develop an image I continually explore color combinations, surface textures and spatial compositions, seeking the point beyond the obvious surface to the place where the image evokes a feeling.
My images are abstracted from real objects and locations but are filtered through the memories and associations I have with those places. I attempt to reflect the inherent truth and characteristics of the natural world and I am interested in discovering our emotional and spiritual connections to our environment. My purpose is to simply focus on the earth and the beauty that surrounds us and use the elements I see there to generate interesting compositions with variety and texture.
In many ways I have come full circle to the place where my art-life was germinated. Remembering a childhood of playing in fields and brooks, I now make art of and about rocks, and I’ve made books that look like rocks. The elements that come from rocks are even the tools I use in my art: slabs of limestone for lithography, copper and zinc for platemaking, powdered gems and minerals in printing inks and paints, grits for polishing and chemicals for etching. These materials are a constant reminder that my art is connected to the earth.
In addition, I now go out onto the land to create art directly in the fields, where I can touch it and move it and relate to it in a way that reflects my heritage and corresponds to my feelings. Creating art is the result of creating a relationship with the world around us, and “the dignity of the Artist lies in his duty to keep awake the sense of wonder in the world.”*
*G.K. Chesterton
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