Noonie Minogue

Statement

Printmaking allows me to experiment with putting an idea through variations, changing the atmosphere with different colours as if I were changing the lights in a theatre.  I often use many plates together in different combinations. Drawing from imagination I’ve created over the years a cast of characters, a set of hieroglyphic shapes that recur in many of my prints - silhouettes in imaginary landscapes that represent some odd hybrid of human, animal and divine. Sea myths and voyages - the poetry and the music that go with them are a constant reference.  If I look long enough at anything, whether a tree or a soup ladle it often begins to take on archetypal human qualities. I make prints that are widely different in style: precise meditative drawings or the wild rapid abstracts that come so readily with mono print.   A recent experiment in self-portraiture allowed me to drop my own face into the landscapes I’ve been creating. It would be hard to say whether this feels more like the emergence of a puppet master from behind the scenes or the explosion of my surreal little creatures into my own more logical reality.