I am an Artist Printmaker. My training as an historic buildings architect has fostered an inquisitiveness
about the stories buildings, and places encapsulate in the very fabric we see every day.
Our built environment is a mine of information about cultural drivers and change. It is a repository of evidence including destruction and the deliberate wiping away of the past. It is continuously undergoing loss and erosion of not only the physical but also of meaning. But the evidence is there, waiting to be exposed and re-interpreted.
I am concerned that in a world of instant imaging, dislocation of context and ever-changing cultural values we are in danger, to quote Baudrillard, of arriving at a stage of ‘more and more information: less and less meaning’. My work seeks out that evidence by visiting and researching; recording my
impressions in sketches and photographs of what triggers a sense of place
and time.
A recent major series of work was centered around a visit to Venice during the appalling floods of 2019 where I sketched in my wellies, as the floodwaters ebbed and flowed over the priceless fabric of that magical city. My current work, ‘The Writing on the Wall’, is a response to 18th and 19th
century graffiti on our sacred buildings and the stories behind the people who
left such clear messages.
As a printmaker, I am interested in the more direct mark-making techniques, where the process can bring added dimensions to the original theme. Lithography, in all its diverse form, and relief prints from laser engravings of my on-site drawings are often combined using a limited pallet of colours.
CONTACT Paul
Email: paul@delaltprint.com
Website:www.delaltprint.com
