About the Artist Currently obsessed with acrylic on chipboard, Irina Teske has been painting for more than 30 years. She has recently expanded her practice to include reductive linocut printmaking and is enjoying the differences and similarities of the two mediums. A graduate of the University of Windsor (1992), she is based in Southwestern Ontario. Artist Statement Examining the relationship between image, material and how art is made serves as the foundation of her practice. Predominately an acrylic on chipboard painter, she has recently begun exploring reductive linoblock printmaking. Emphasizing what is unique to each medium is central to her decision in choosing which medium to use to express a visual idea. With her paintings, the dichotomy between the natural and the man-made is acknowledged by a close engagement with the chipboard, unearthing the imagery inherent in the material. The repetitive patterns found in nature echo the repetition found in industry, in the mass production of building products. Though the starting point is often a reference to the real world, as the work progresses, the material, and the position of the chips or even the lumberyard stamp influence the development of the image. Chipboard's rough, unfinished surface works against our preconceived notions of the softness and beauty found in nature's ideal. The material has its own repetitive patterns that can be manipulated (by painting individual chips and background) to reflect and correspond to the patterns found in the natural world. With printmaking, her subject matter is often the same but the process of making a linoblock print is very different. She is interested in the simplification of the image by focusing on blocks of colour and the repetitive elements found in nature.