Knot Series Artist Statement

The knot series of encaustic paintings with hand-drawn silkscreened knots is based on rope I discover washed up on beaches. I document these found lines through photographs, and then transform them into simplified line drawings, carborundum plates, and silkscreens. I explore concepts of time and place: these free-form shapes pre-existed my drawings, themselves having recorded unseen elements, tides or people. Through repetitive and rotated imagery, these drawn knots often anthropomorphize into human-like forms surreptitiously caught dancing, embracing, hiding, or fighting. By stripping the body of its human form and personal identity, but leaving intact gesture and interaction, these works express universal emotions and actions, all while referencing a hidden tangible past with origins in found objects.

Jen Greely

Jen Greely