Eleanor Annand
Rise #3, Letterpress printed and die-cut cotton paper, 33 x 33 x 1.5 inches, 2018
“Color and form are emotion to me.”
Eleanor Annand is an artist living and working in Weaverville, North Carolina (USA). Her approach to color is grounded in subtlety and her approach to printmaking is somewhere between intuitive and analytical. Eleanor’s modular paper sculptures are created with letterpress and diecut methods. Currently she is working on large scale die-cut and cast paper sculptures.
How does color represent or support the mind space of your work?
Color and form are emotion to me. There is so much subtleness that can be achieved with shifts in color, and for me it goes beyond formalism and becomes about paying very close attention to how a piece feels.
“I trust intuition to make the initial decisions about what color hits the right emotion, but then the technical printmaker kicks in and dials in the exact tone with the mixing guide.”
Gather, Letterpress-printed and die-cut cotton paper, 19.5 x 19.5 x 1.5 inches, 2020
Rise #2. Letterpress printed and die-cut cotton paper, 33 x 33 x 1.5 inches, 2018
How does the printmaking process itself relate to how you work with color?
In my modular paper sculptures I often work with monochromatic colors. Often the shifts in tone are created by the dimension of the piece and the way the light hits it throughout the day. That interaction with light and shadow is what I am most interested in.
There are a couple of ways that relates to process. My presses print one color at a time, there is an economy about it, a simplicity that I embrace and try to make the most of. I also use my presses to die-cut the flat pieces that will eventually be folded into 3-dimensional forms. This gives me the tonal variation by casting shadows that change as the light in the room changes. It’s about light and so it’s about color.
Where do you reside between technical and intuitive in your work as an artist using color?
I’m pretty split in this department. I trust intuition to make the initial decisions about what color hits the right emotion, but then the technical printmaker kicks in and dials in the exact tone with the mixing guide. For better or worse, I experience a friction between the technical and intuitive in all aspects of my work.
I’m very craft and material driven in that I think the way we use materials becomes an innate feature of the work. With color in printmaking I would love to move towards creating my own ink with natural pigments, that feels like an important next exploration.
Grayscale Fade, Letterpress-printed and die-cut cotton paper, 24 x 36 x 1.5 inches, 2019