James Jamie Nares | Road Paint Prints

As with all of her collaborations with Durham Press, Jamie Nares' intaglio and screenprint Road Paint Prints series explores new methods of mark making - in this work drawing directly from methods used in her concurrent Road Paint paintings that were the subject of a 2013 exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York. The monumental paintings in the exhibition, standing at 10 x 8 feet tall, were made using a road striping machine Nares brought to her studio. Typically used to create lines and dashes on pavement to direct traffic, Nares instead walked across the canvas with the machine to create large, gestural marks with thermoplastic paint, often adding glass beads that create a textural quality that becomes reflective from specific angles.

Utilizing the same machine on site at Durham Press, the Road Paint Prints began by walking the striping machine across pieces of melamine to create distinct, almost totem-like lines. The raised lines were used to make a polyurethane mold from a casting, from which ink was hand applied and printed with an intaglio technique over a black screenprinted background.