Karin Daymond Monotypes

Karin Daymond working on a monotype at The Artists' Press

Karin Daymond worked on these monotypes during 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2023. As monotypes, they are in essence paintings on paper and exist as single prints (they are not part of an edition).

"Monotype printing is an absorbing process. Relinquishing some of the control that I have at an easel with a brush in my hand, I find that the process is the perfect match for the idea that we are subject to the forces of nature and that our existence is not as permanent as we may think.

These environments are real places, but they also reflect my inner landscape: my sense of belonging is a recurrent theme. The Lowveld, where I live, is a fairly gentle environment, a landscape of plenty from which images like “Secretive” come. It’s intriguing and colourfully overgrown. Moving east towards the coast and the Eastern Shores of Lake St Lucia the environment is fragile and exposed. There is a delicate balance between water, sand, wind and plant growth in the nutrient-poor ground. It has the feeling of a primordial environment and walking through those pans I expected to find a perfectly preserved coelacanth fossil in the ancient seabed that I was tramping on. Human activity has left its mark too. Recently, forestry plantations have been cleared and some stubborn, indigenous trees remain, severely battered by the elements in “Eastern Shores” and “Seabed”. In “Dune” that primordial feeling comes through. These dunes are amongst the highest forested dunes in the world and for thousands of years, they have been shaped by the wind.

Working in layers, as one can do with monotypes, is a process akin to peeling back the layers of these landscapes. Similarly, rubbing and scratching into flat layers of ink in the “Free State” landscapes made me feel like a farmer working the land. In these prints I pushed the ink and paper, striving for thinner and paler layers to capture the quiet space of the Free State. A similar approach works for my experience of the Karoo, but the spaces are bigger, the elements more extreme and man has less of an impact.When I am back at my easel, there is a new sense of lightness in my brush.

Staying on a beach in Sicily (only 70km from the coast of Africa), my sense of belonging was challenged. I was an African, staying on foreign soil. Thousands of refugees from my home continent were arriving on boats. Many drowned, and those who made it were desperate enough to have risked their lives and had left behind everything they knew. We found traces of refugees on the shores; clothes and shoes, bags, as if they would be collected later. In these monotypes, I used patterns from African cloths that I have collected over many years. These cloths seem to be a common denominator amongst African women, even an extension of their sense of identity. In the most troubled of times, we see women with a cloth wrapped around them, and that cloth is both practical (carrying babies, providing shade) and also a statement of beauty and colour." Karin Daymond, 2014

New Editions from The Artists' Press

 Karin Daymond Monotype Archive

For orders (with free shipping) or any other enquiries, please contact us.


Title: A Beginning
Medium: Monotype
Size: 40 x 40 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 3 360 (excl.VAT)

Title: Taken II
Medium: Monotype
Size: 57 x 57 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 6 200 (excl.VAT)


Title: Nineteen I
Medium: Monotype
Size: 50 x 65 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 6 200 (excl.VAT)

Title: Nineteen II
Medium: Monotype
Size: 50 x 65 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 6 200 (excl.VAT)

Title: Karoo Flight II
Medium: Monotype
Size: 61 x 105 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 9 975 (excl.VAT)

Title: Woven II
Medium: Monotype
Size: 40 x 40 cm
Edition size: 1/1
SOLD

Title: About to Grow
Medium: Monotype
Size: 57 x 77 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Price: R 6 200 (excl.VAT)

Title: Dune Forest I
Medium: Monotype
Size: 50 x 66 cm
Edition size: 1/1
SOLD

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Monotypes and Monoprints by other Artists