Hunting and Gathering

Hunting and Gathering

By Talleen Hacikyan

Printmaking captures all my senses and responds to my need for ritual. As I prepare to print, I enter a state of serene concentration. Each gesture, repeated the same way many times in the past, has been memorized by my body. As I dip the sponge into the basin of water to wet my paper I feel close to the elements of nature. It has a cleansing effect. The scent of Charbonnel ink in the air reminds me of where I am and welcomes me to my printing session. Then there is the meditative nature of creating colors, inking and wiping the plate, turning the wheel of the press... culminated by the eternally magic moment of puling the print off the press. I am a true addict.

The collagraph technique (on cardboard plates), is how I express my inner world. I feel close to the material; I love feeling the warm surface of the plate, ripping into the cardboard, and getting my fingers into the acrylic gel medium as I collage elements. The flexible nature of cardboard lends itself to spontaneous and direct work, and this lets me create freely, without being preoccupied with technique.

My work deals with the cycles of life, the connection between

mankind and nature, and their fragile balancing act. Textures reminiscent of rupestral art, and simplified human and animal forms, influenced by the art of indigenous cultures, give a primitive aura to my prints.

Fish frozen in intricate woodcut textures, yearn to swim off the Arches paper. Crooked houses stoically float in slow motion on black and white water. Trees become people; arms reach up and branch out, feet firmly rooted to nature. Moody tints of superimposed color envelope prehistoric horses. A blood red turtle rests upon a human chest and inspires the title "Turtle Heart". Within the cut out shape of a small body, flame red lines trace the symbolic silhouette of a little girl. Heads floating like helium filled balloons bounce from masses of deep ochre to jade green clouds. Points of yellow peaking through shiny black ink outline a primitive hand, reminiscent of a flame. A tiny figure rests in the palm of this hand. These are a few of the scenes that pop into mind when I think back over the years I have spent creating prints.

Agueda Pizarro Rayo, in a review of my 1992 solo exhibition at the Rayo Museum in Colombia, wrote: "Talleen is able to see within present space and time and travel to dimensions foreign to the majority of us. It is as if her visionary eye opens roads, and then shapes caves in the air and filters the past, the future and the present simultaneously... Talleen's prints reveal to us the cycles of life and death. These are not dreams or fantasies of escapism, they are the revelations of a wise woman, of a magician who has traveled within herself, into the infinity of time".

The creative process fascinates me. I find it is a matter of "hunting and gathering". The hunting involves a conscious seeking out of inspiration or information, such as a trip, a museum visit, consultation of books etc. The gathering is more the domain of the unconscious. It is what happens on its own as a result of the hunting being filtered through me. Sometimes
I can identify where the elements of my images come from. Sometimes it remains a delightful and provocative mystery. I few years ago I made a monoprint of two figures standing side by side against plains of brick red, dusty ochre, powdery green, and crispy blue. At the time, this marked the beginning of a new palette for me. Some time later, I spotted the exact same color combination in a slide I had taken while visiting the Bolivian "altiplano". I had recently traveled in South America for five months and realized that my senses had gathered a bank of new stimuli, which was gradually becoming released and expressed in my prints.

Each new picture belongs to a code and sometimes the sequence of images reveal a story... my story. A silent dialogue may take place: I create, I observe what I have created, this creation reveals to me how I feel and how I will proceed to create. When this happens I feel in tune with my art. Of course it does not always go so smoothly. If it did it would not feel so exhilarating when it does finally flow so naturally!

For the past two years I have been exploring the theme of the head. This obsession grew naturally and started with the almost instinctual desire to make round shapes. These heads are often made of transparent plaster textures, superimposed on another color, thereby creating a feeling of depth and looking inward. Eventually
I started including legible and illegible writing in these images... messages from within, grafitti of the unconscious. In these works I have captivated and recorded sensations that travel freely through my mind. The viewer deciphers these messages, the way some cultures decode messages in fire and smoke.

I still am not sure why I am drawn to the head. Perhaps it is my symbol for thought. Perhaps it is the artistic manifestation of the baby I gave birth to last year. It remains an enigma that continues to taunt me.

I am currently working on a series of monoprints where I pass collagraph plates and and pieces of collage through the press at the same time. Baby handprints, child-like expressions peering from rocky textures, totems of faces from prehistoric times arching upwards keep haunting and teasing me. The imagery is fertile and with each new piece comes the contemplation of the next "episode" of a never-ending story. It is this process of hunting and gathering that is so essential to my spiritual survival.

Talleen Hacikyan lives in Montreal. She works at the Atelier Circulaire and gives printmaking classes and workshops in several schools and professional studios across Quebec. Her work is exhibited internationally and she is currently preparing her next solo show. She is represented by galeries in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa.

You can e-mail Talleen at yayotal@cam.org

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