Chelsea Odden

Artist Statement

I work with a personal language of mark, creating environments full of layered texture. Through the use of the trace monotype printing method, I overlap and layer line drawings to create complex visual compositions. Horizontal divisions and movements create the suggestion of landscape, providing the viewer with the opportunity to enter into the piece. I create layered history by capturing the previous marks made on the printing plate and layering them anew. The gestural marks convey my emotional response to, and my associations with, life: its layers, events, and progressions. Throughout the work I attempt to maintain a balance between chaos and stillness.

In the series titled Nocturne, I emphasize a sense of atmospheric space. Maintaining a monochromatic color palette allows the focus to be on subtle tone and mark variation. When shown together, these pieces suggest experiences in a landscape: in different seasons, at varying times of night, and from diverse points of view.

The series Things We Cannot See features work created through various printmaking techniques such as screenprinting and wood engraving, used both painterly and controlled. These pieces are a product of my working style, creating environments of layered texture. Things We Cannot See is inspired by a poem by 17th Century Japanese Poet, Basho.

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower; There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.

This poem resonates with me through its invitation to contemplate dualities of sky and earth, the imagined and not imagined, the physical and spiritual.