GAETANNE SYLVESTER
While studying fine art, I realized my interest in organic shapes, textures, and colours in all that
surrounds me, all that is seen and unseen. It continues to fascinate me to this day. How we
humans fit into our organic world, what role we have played, how we survived, and how we have
manipulated it.
In my practice, I have used silkscreen, etching, embossing, and drawing on paper. My work is
planned step by step, which suits my personality. However, my ideas evolve in the making, and
I often don’t realize what I am trying to say until a piece is completed.
When I was introduced to silkscreen, I felt an immediate connection and comfort. Later, I
enjoyed working with digital collages/montages of layers of my black and white photos, scans of
lace, ultra-sounds, my etchings, and medical illustrations. Working digitally is remarkably
similar to working in silkscreen, both use an accumulation of layers.
Later, after being introduced to ceramics, I sensed a knowing familiarity with it as well. I felt like
a young child playing with mud. Hand-building allowed me the freedom to create a large body
of work. Again, drawings initiate a manually intensive process. Since relocating my studio
recently, new approaches in fiber and paper-based works have presented me with welcome
new challenges.
My inspiration continues to be that of organic textures, with an emphasis on our neurological
makeup and how that affects us throughout our lives. In my work, lace is used as a metaphor for
genetics, and DNA, because of its delicate linear intricacies, and its visual reference to the helix.
Every stitch depends on another stitch just like the neurological pathways in the brain.