Together.

This is an intriguing artwork.

The artist is Yves Preston. She exhibits with Sussex Printmakers.

Yves has created something very pleasing here. This is a piece which would sit well in someones living space, and would start a few conversations.

She has brought together two very different techniques: lino-cut printing, and some fluid colour-field work. They are different in appearance and different in operation too.

Printmakers will often tell you how tricky and uncooperative even the most carefully prepared matrix can be. Edges bleed. Rogue elements can appear (and disappear) from nowhere. And yet there is also something predictable about printing. By and large, what appears on the paper is what the artist intended. This is what we find in the lower half of this artwork. In the upper half is a disc of colour. Yves has created this by applying a mixture of inks and alcohol to non-absorbant paper. To say the least, this will have been a highly unstable combination. The inks will swirl and spread, and finally be deposited as the alcohol evaporates. The artist might set the process going, but the result is largely outside of her/his control.

So here we have a monochrome, sharply-defined print of an organic object ... brought into contact with a regular geometric shape of fluid and indeterminate colour.

How are we going to engage with this?

We could begin by asking how the two halves speak to each other. Or do they? Certainly, there seems to be some tension between the two elements. Part of our brain wants to settle on one or the other. We almost find ourselves flitting between the two. Simply doing that causes us to reflect on the contrasting natures of the techniques. One seems to communicate information with its clear lines; the other ... well, it strikes us as resembling more closely what life is like: a little bit messy and hard to tie down.

But what happens if we try to bring the two together as Yves has done? After all, this is one image. I think that a lot of us start to create stories at this point; narratives which explain how they co-exist - "This insect is gazing at the moon" and so on. Some of us will want to resist that urge and sit with the artwork longer. Who knows what insights it might offer?

For me, Yves' work is a good example of the way art can stretch and prompt us. And she has achieved this with a great economy of content. Less able artists would have been tempted to fill the frame, telling us how we ought to be reading their work.