Carol Schottenfeld

As a printmaker I am interested in traditional techniques, such as intaglio, silkscreen, and lithography, but I feel that to keep them isolated and not use them in combination with other techniques and media is to let my work stagnate rather than evolve. I have always been drawn to the processes of printmaking for it’s innate ability of replication and repetition. The ease of creating a silkscreen and printing it multiple times on various surfaces, for example, lends a cohesion to the work that I don’t feel is easily imitated.  My process is to let the work lead me to discover which techniques should be used in any given piece, as well as let images form organically without a clear plan or strategy.  Therefore my work tends to take many different forms at one time.  Currently I am working with silkscreen, monoprint, and hand-drawn images; drawing my sources from the natural world and from figure studies that represent issues of depression, humanity, and the magnificent intricacy of creation. The structure these images take often recall things like bones and human anatomy, plants and fungi, and animals that I currently feel an affinity for. Many of the plants, fungi, and animals used come from photos that I have personally taken and can be found in abundance in my native state of New Jersey.