In 2006 while still a student with unlimited access to a print studio, I discovered the joys of the monotype and fell for its technical complexity yet deceptive simplicity.

Wiping away ink from a plate with rags, cotton tips and improvised tools and then seeing the resultant image appear reversed once pressed onto paper continues to surprise and excite me through its accidental nature.

Within the tight limitations of the print process, there exists a weighty challenge to perfectionism or slickness. There is a high rate of attrition, due to the nature of chance and editing.

These monotypes in their immediacy and close intimate process of mark making, manifest as the shadowy forms of a sense of imperfect physical self and that of a psychological interiority.

The figures are emergent- not from references but appear out of the black and into the light. This darkness suggests both a Hadean underworld and velvety womb where, teetering between expulsion and rebirth, shapes and forms are wiped away into existence.

Kirsten Roberts, 2025.