Voice of Sea, 2016
In a way, I stumbled into making books.
By 1990, the subject matter of my work had became dye colour itself. Dye is very different from a pigment based colourant. A pigment lies on the surface of cloth or canvas, whereas liquid dye is drawn through the surface, colouring the fibres of the cloth, then is washed away, leaving no residue to dull the hue.
I became interested in spatial ambiguity and order, and deconstructed the process i was using through visual sequence. To counteract the transient nature of dye colour I protected the image sequences within books and boxes. I explored, not only dye on cloth, but poured, dyed paper fibre – mixing and combining media. Gradually, there was a change of focus; I began to combine collage and digital image to explore the difference between dye, pigments and digital colour.
To use the book form to explore and record these ideas and changes in direction became integral to the process.
see ‘Deconstructing Space’
These early books were exhibited in two book fairs organised by Marcus Cambell in the mid 1990’S – first at the South Bank, then the Barbican.
Pat Hodson 