2006 - 2008
Filmwell and Farfield
Nicholette's work is based in the natural environment: woodlands, gardens, parks and nature reserves; where she prints directly from the ground, trees and plants around her. She soaks large papers in streams and ponds then, using her car as a printing press, or binding trees with paper, she lifts a delicate and individual print of the plants in that place, at that time. The prints are impregnated with the essence of the landscape: its texture, structure and traces of colour.
"These prints record the life of a fragment of the landscape. In this case a tree - how it twisted and branched, was stained by moss and lichen, was pruned and damaged by human and nature. Knarled, diseased, infested, holed by woodpeckers and squirrels. They are the punctuation marks in the story and history of the tree; some indication of what happened to it.
I am examining this just a little bit: creating an emotional and intellectual space in which to have a relationship with the tree; to make it easier to see the tree as it is. In the way that the life of the tree is held in time by a photograph or drawing, so the prints hold something that comes from an intimate, temporal relationship with it. Slow, visceral contact between hand and form, bark and paper.
Where the tree rips through the paper I repair it. A mark of respect. Darning, stitching, crocheting. Opening up the life of the tree: honouring its scars and drawing attention to what the tree has survived."
