Wendy Prellwitz

monoprint

email : wprellwitz@prellchil.com

 

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recent monoprints

Currents Series

Water itself has no pattern, except for the forces of wind, tide, depth, and the ever-changing light. The waves appear like darker swaths at a distance (every sailor knows the shadowy “cats paws” of wind approaching) and break down into perceptible individual waves as they approach, with reflective crests and shadowed troughs.

In this Currents monotype series, I am exploring the feeling of water, including the similarity of the surface wave pattern and the sand ripple patterns they leave behind and the look of a bay, both near and far. Standing on land’s edge, I am mesmerized by the vast, unknowable sea and the sense of an infinite beyond.

Fissures Series

On my recent trips to the west coast of Ireland and Monhegan I’ve been exploring the patterns in coastline rock ledges. The cracks I see under my feet on the ledges below the Down Patrick cliffs in Ireland are repetitive patterns of horizontal and overlapping vertical lines – which, I have discovered, reflect the forces from shifting continental plates, that created stress fractures along the shifting lines of compression.

Those same shapes are repeated on the indentations of the coastline cliffs, as wave action eroded cliffs and sections dropped off into the sea along stress lines – creating an affinity between the micro and macro view. The ragged, angular cliff shapes are dramatic, with deeply shadowed cliff walls above the ocean.

In the Fissure monoprint series, both cliff shape and rock cracking are combined – a symbiotic expression of the forces, the patterns, and the coastline landscape.

Night Glow Series

These moonlight monotypes reflect a lifetime of gazing out over Peconic Bay, on the North Fork of Long Island. I will never cease to love that silvery glow that fills the bay when a full moon first rises, and then the path that glimmers as the moon rides high in the sky.

The images are intended to capture the dark on dark texture of barely seen waves, contrasting with luminous moonlight, and a moment on a still fall night, when the distant horizon beckons with a shimmering glow: a moment of connection to the light.