Artist's statement I create these fibre sculpture figures to honour life, and life is most obvious through its creatures’ expressions. Be that creature human or animal, our expressions are the loudest testament to being alive. We, with our millions of individually unique faces and bodies, are what make earth exciting, dramatic, passionate, miserable, ecstatic, turbulent, gentle, hateful, beautiful and so much more, just by resting our head this way or looking at each other that way, closing our eyes or opening our mouths to Roaar or howl at the moon. And then there are our offspring…watching, learning, imitating and aspiring to become us, until their old enough to love who they are. This is where my creations come in. To teach children at a young age to love their childhood and bring them into the art world through their own world of storytelling and expressions. We confine art to the adult world and our appreciation is often attached to “experience”. At the same time we crave that uncomplicated, free expression that often eludes experienced artists as they lose the child within them, and with the child, their truest freedom of expression. Nature is where I find my freedom. My child. And that is where my figures, along with a story written up for each one, is inspired from. To be a reminder that there remains much to love about life
“Colour helps to express light, not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists, that in the artist’s brain.” – Henri Matisse
There are several techniques for dyeing Batik. The Wissa Wassef Artists use the immersion technique though they may occasionally paint by hand or combine both techniques. The white cloth (100% Egyptian cotton) is first drawn on with hot parafin wax using a "Hanafeya", then immersed in the lightest shade of the chosen colours. The parts of the cloth that have been painted on with wax, don't absorb the colour, so at this first stage, the drawings remain white while the background becomes the first colour it was dyed in. Then it's hung to dry then treated with sodium silicate (a fixing agent). It remains very well wrapped in nylon for 7 to 8 hours to prevent any air bubbles from entering into the wrapped cloth as it causes a stain wherever air is introduced.
The next step is to wash it and hang it again to dry, then it's ready for the next layer of wax and colour. This time the waxed parts will keep the first shade it was immersed in from absorbing any new colour. So the drawings will be of this colour while the background colour changes to the colour resulting from combining the first light shade with the second colour (for eg. if the first colour is yellow and the second blue, the background is now green while the drawings are white and yellow)
The steps above are repeated for fixing the second colour. This process is repeated as many times as the artists want, depending on how colourful the end result is intended to be.
It's a long process to get one Batik piece ready but it must be fixed in every stage of dyeing to prevent the colour from running when washed.
