There was a moment in my studio when everything jelled. Things began mounting behind my head. Like ripples, the work emanated from the corner, consuming increasingly more studio space. Cut-outs hung like stalagmites; floor-scraps accumulated in burgeoning mounds. I conjured a paper cave, pregnant with vines and tendrils, dark and impermeable to weather: a safe place to wallow and hide.
Fluidity and precision are inherent to the process, but not necessarily to the concept. What I mean is that the work has to embody those particular qualities to actually exist. I could use charcoal to achieve a similar concept, but since my process employs cut paper, its precision and fluidity becomes inherent. Maintaining structural integrity creates overall “fluidity” and the knife will always give way to “precision.”
Chris Natrop brings new dimensions to drawing with large-scale cut paper abstract landscapes. Drawing by hand with a box knife, spontaneously without lines, the contour drawings that the artist creates are made from memory and his subconscious. The process is somewhat like free form self-expression. What seems to come naturally to the artist evokes unnatural settings of multidimensional optical illusions of perception.