Dorien Deschamps
Visual Artist
Tide and Trace
Tide and Trace is a contemplative series of gelli-printed acrylic monotypes exploring the layered relationship between natural landscapes and the residue of human presence. Each piece plays with abstracted forms, rich textural contrasts, and a subdued yet emotive palette to evoke the liminal spaces where land meets water, memory meets material, and gesture meets erosion.
The prints often use bold, gestural marks layered over soft gradients and organic textures—suggesting remnants, driftwood, wayfinding symbols, or coastal artifacts revealed by receding tides. The works suggest both permanence and impermanence, with each impression bearing the mark of a fleeting moment captured through the pressure of printmaking.
Tide and Trace is a body of work that navigates the edge between permanence and disappearance — a visual meditation on how time, nature, and human intention leave marks on the world and within us. These monotypes, created through layered gelli plate prints, evoke sediment, signals, and shadows. The process embraces the unpredictability of printmaking, allowing textures to surface like artifacts washed ashore.
Each piece is a quiet echo of something half-remembered: a symbol, a landscape, a forgotten map. Through color-blocked zones, spontaneous brushwork, and contrasting surface textures, this series invites reflection on the landscapes we carry inside — landscapes shaped as much by erosion as by construction.
