Resisting Completion: The Connection Between Printmaking and Memory | Andrea deBruijn
I thought I would live in Montreal forever…
I had gone through art school and come of age steeped in the city’s joie de vivre, and I loved everything: the parks, the terrasses, and the sunny, third-floor walk-up with the turquoise living room that I shared with four housemates. This notion vanished when several years ago I said goodbye to my home and hauled my belongings into storage. Presented with an opportunity I could not refuse, I was on my way to Banff, Alberta for a yearlong apprenticeship at a printmaking studio.
Before packing up my bedroom, I paused to snap a few photos. Images of that lived-in, familiar space became a container for the feelings of nostalgia and homesickness that I experienced after leaving, even as I immersed myself in a rich new environment. The Rockies welcomed me. As the months passed and I settled in, I knew I would feel bittersweet about leaving Banff too. I understood that my associations with ‘home’ were fading and accumulating all at once.
In response, I began an ongoing screen print series—one intended to evolve over time—where each printed layer corresponded to a space I had inhabited. To generate a layer, I used photographs taken from each previous home, documenting locations that left an impression on me from intimate living spaces to landscapes. Stacking these images changes my perception of the past. Every layer builds on, distorts, or recontextualizes the previous imagery.
“As memories accumulate, they shape and define the present, and like layers of a print, they morph”
As a printmaker, I am accustomed to thinking in layers. When constructing a complex image using methods like screenprint or woodcut, I print a single colour at a time. The layers of colour and detail combine to create form, depth, and coherence. In a densely composed print, the initial layers recede, but unless blocked out completely, each layer peeks through, influencing the way that subsequent elements are read and interpreted. As memories accumulate, they shape and define the present, and like layers of a print, they morph.
The project has one rule: I do not create a new layer for any given home until after I have moved away. This produces an underlying symmetry, requiring that something be left in the past for the print to advance toward its next phase. I am interested in the work’s slow, spacious rhythm – how its progress extends over the course of years, marked by major shifts in my surroundings, and by extension, my inner life.
I recently relocated from Toronto to Sackville, New Brunswick, to accept a position as the Printmaking Technician at Mount Allison University. Living near the marshlands influenced what I recall about the metropolis; it affects how I represent my previous home.
As I prepared to create my next layer, it struck me how few images I had captured of Toronto. I struggled to find pictures of the hurried streetscapes I traversed daily for almost five years. I’d occupied two apartments; in both cases, most photos were taken after the space had been emptied, just before returning the keys. I wonder how these sparse depictions will inform the project’s meaning and evolution.
Meanwhile, the unique impressions that New Brunswick makes will not be realized within the project unless I move somewhere else. I am conscious that the memories I form here, and the documentation of my experience, may one day become part of the work. For now, the prints resist completion. Without knowing what future homes I may inhabit, my images remain necessarily in progress.
Andrea deBruijn
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