My Raison D’etre – Priscilla Purcell

When I was a child my mother gave me many postcards of famous artist’s work.
One in particular haunts me to this day; L’Inconnue de La Seine – a photograph taken by Man Ray of a death mask of a young woman who committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Seine in the 1880s.

The death mask and the photograph are both enigmatic and mysterious in their own ways. Who was this beautiful young woman, where did she come from, what was her history, why did she wish to die?

I think a lot of my artwork and the inspiration behind it, carries this ‘unknowable-ness’ within it – that which is unseen is significant.
I have learnt that negative space is as important as the positive image. For me, this concept is perfectly expressed in a poem by Laozi, cited in The Medium is the Massage by Marshall McCluhan:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in molding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness;
Thus we are helped by what is not,
To use what is.

Working as a mixed media artist, I use many different media to make marks – paint, wax, stitch, photographs, silk screen printing, collage, handwriting. My career started in Graphic Design, specialising in Corporate Identity and Corporate Communications, practicing in London, Germany, Hong Kong, Boston and New York. The disciplines of Graphics and Typography, which I studied at the LCP, continue to influence my artwork

For me being creative is about ideas, but also as importantly, decision making and problem solving. Once I have a kernel of an idea and images, then I have to consider the most practical way of turning these ideas into reality.

Handmade paper is an integral part of most of my artwork – paper that is made in my studio or chosen from my extensive collection of handmade paper that I have collected on my travels – Japan, China, Myanmar, Korea, Thailand, Italy, to name a few. The selection of the paper for each piece of artwork is carefully considered – the texture, weight, softness, crispness, flexibility, as well as colour, are all factors in the decision making.

Writing is also an integral part of my mark making – handwritten and typographic as well as Asemic. I have long been fascinated by the marks and symbols that we create in order to communicate – possibly stimulated by the discovery that I can write backwards fluently with my right hand, but also forwards and backwards with my left hand, as well as writing with both hands at once in any direction, for example, one forwards and the other backwards.

‘The day that man broke language into sounds and invented graphic symbols to represent these sounds, he bestowed upon humanity the greatest cultural tool one could ever dream of.’

From: Writing: The Story of Alphabets & Scripts by Georges Jean.