Sylvia Gonzalez

My oversized fruit series is done with soft pastel on paper. I put down many layers of pastel, one over the other almost as if painting, but using my fingers as a brush. I wear gloves when I draw and work the pastel into the paper, using most often a soft printmaking paper, BFK Rives. Sometimes insect images are incorporated onto the paper by collage. They create an element of design reminiscent of a chop mark.

Whether I am working on my fruit pastels or layering images or fields of color down in a monoprint, my main interest is color juxtaposition. How colors are put down on the page and the feelings or emotions it provokes is what most excites me about my work. Imagery is almost always organic, whether fruits, birds, insects, but more recently I am incorporating images in monoprints, which speak to me on an intuitive level or are part of my own or my family’s history. These pieces are layers of images are done with a monoprinting technique which utilizes actual xeroxs as a printing plate. The images are reproduced by a lithography process which uses gum arabic and water. Each one is done individually and is an original. I layer pastel drawings of birds, critters or plant life of one sort or another on top of the monoprints. This work is feels to me like layers of time, memories, coinciding with the present moment, and reinforces my love of nature and my ever increases wonder of all its creatures.