Henriette Tavenier
The velvety skin of lithography has always appealed to me as a painter and draftsman. As I painted with oil and homemade egg tempera, and as I drew with chalk and marker, I felt touched by the frayness of the lithographic line and the black depth of the tusche planes.
My intuition proved to be right, when I started with lithography at the Basement Press Diepenheim under the guidance of Aad Hekker, a world of possibilities opened up and I discovered that through this craft I could express in a very direct way the organic worlds that stir within me.
I literally embrace the lithographic stone to push it towards me and work on it, and figuratively because of the infinite and unpredictable possibilities that the grained surface offers me.
In the lithographic process, playing with the stone and the ink roller is more important to me than creating a perfect print run. Therefore, I mainly make thematic series consisting of multiple uniques, printing different stones on top of each other until new unexplored realities emerge. Serendipity is an abiding principle for me in lithography. First there is the urgency to make “something”, then there is the vague plan, I embrace the stone, an image grows, something happens with the ink roll and among the lithography press… and finally I find the unexpected….
