Karly Anderson | Print Maker

My fascination with death began with the premature passing of a friend my senior year in high school. Her sudden death by suicide affected me deeply with conflicting feelings of insurmountable grief and the fragility of life. We were the same age, in the same classes, and shared similar early signs of depression; this left me contemplating why I got to continue living and she had not. Ten years later, grief continues to influence my life and my work seeks to convey these deep feelings in a boldly graphic block print style. Grief is not limited to the death of those held dear, it is all experienced from loss of relationships, change of circumstance, and emphatic aching from societal ills. My work explores the nuanced gamut from dark, intense emotions in the throes of depression, to missing someone’s presence through imaginative portraiture. My work challenges the viewer to confront their own feelings of grief. 

My work often has dark undertones that deal with mental illness and melancholy. I often incorporate the symbolic lexicon of flowers found in Victorian floriography, to set the tone for a piece through delicate framing of flora. Lilies for purity, marigold for grief and despair, and chrysanthemum for truth. This expands further to my interest in vintage human biology scientific illustrations to inform not only the anatomy, but add a macabre flair. Along with my taste for Gothic horror, which conveys itself in the deep emotions, uncanny, and sublimely romantic expressions of the women depicted in my portraits. The sinuous marks I make reveal a contemplative hush, evoking a disquieted confrontation of intense emotions. I take great inspiration in the slow, contemplative nature of creating block prints found in traditional Japanese woodblocks. Each piece is painstakingly crafted, by hand, through carving away the surface of linoleum to create the image in relief, then burnished on the floor of my Brooklyn apartment. The quick-and-dirty nature of my style leads to offset registration, ink spots, and highly saturated ink. This nature mirrors ragged expressions of sadness and blank feelings. My printing practice is intentionally non-delicate in contrast to the undulating mark making. Drawing inspiration from American traditional tattoos, my compositions  often lack borders to mimic the way tattoos sit on the flesh.