My creative interests have stemmed from psychoanalysis, unspoken languages, the human figure, and psychological spaces: dreams, hallucinations, and the psyche. I use the figure and space to explore what cannot be said in words, or what I do not wish to say through words, and regularly visit themes of doubles, mirroring, disintegration and deformation, vulnerability, conflict, and the Grotesque. 

For many years and over many series of works, the figure has been present and I have thought about the physical body, psychological spaces within it, and blurring their representations by using figure and space (or lack thereof). There are unspoken languages—marks that are both human made and marks that reflect or are directly made from the rooms and spaces in which the figures inhabit. Use of light, shadow and the minimization of color, charge the space in each image. Over the years my work has evolved, but a human presence (whether figurative or conceptualized), links and bonds my different series. My early projects like Flux, Mirror, Parallels, and The Others present figures in various interior and internal environments. A later series, Body Language, features figures in vast spaces, without surroundings. However, my recent series What Happened Here stripped the figure from the interiors. Despite this, the domestic spaces evoke a human presence, as well as the use of hand-based marks, which add to the sense of history of those spaces.

The spaces depicted are almost entirely domestic interiors (bathrooms, bedrooms, rooms in a home), which I use as internal spaces (that of the psyche, dreams, or hallucinations). However, these could also be environments where the viewer is a witness. This was a focus in the series Parallels, where having a borderless/frameless presentation and making the figures life-sized, invited the viewer to occupy the same spaces. There are some series where these environments have been mostly omitted (Syzygy, Body Language) or are minimized (The Others). This removal of surroundings suggests the figures occupying a mental space, while its simplification in The Others proposes what the interior looks like while emphasizing the larger-than-life size of the grotesque figures in the series. Domestic interiors are familiar, intimate, have history, and are sometimes vulnerable spaces. This not only offers personal connection to the viewer but can also heighten the juxtaposition of the familiar with the unknown, the feared.

Combining printmaking techniques helps inform my conceptual interests and expands my knowledge of what is possible in printmaking. My methodology is complex, beginning with photography, responding with drawings, and culminating in hybrid printmaking techniques. The photographic phase is intuitive and performative, using long exposures, double exposures, experimental photography, and other analog manipulations. This approach creates what I call “photographic marks”—blurred body movements, or other elements created during the photos’ exposure. In the drawing phase, I respond to the images—sometimes drawing figures and creating marks by hand that activate the space and any figure(s) that it contains. Hand-based marks and drawings are created in a few different ways. Some are directly taken from the space the figure was shot in, or are inspired from that space. Others are connected to body tics, expressive movements of the body or have personal symbolism. Both the hand-based and “photographic marks” act as an unspoken language. Finally, the photographic imagery and drawings are translated into photographic and hand-based elements through a variety of printmaking processes. This often means creating hybrid prints, combining techniques such as photopolymer intaglio, screenprinting, photolithography and more. Using different types of marks and techniques also suggests a meeting of two worlds—of mind and body, of the familiar and hidden.

grace sippy 2024