08 Desire for the open, time disappears – Postponed

Peter Gentenaar, Pat Torley

As pioneers, in the early 1970’s, Peter Gentenaar and Pat Torley immersed themselves in every possibility for making art using their own handmade paper. Each of them gradually found their way to a special technique of their own, Peter going totally 3-dimensional and Pat, flat, painting with pulp.

Peter’s sculptures are constructed using shapes borrowed directly from the plant world. He starts flat, on a vacuum table, building the frame of the piece. He may imitate the spine structure of a leaf, or use more basic forms. These show the baroque work of the shrinking force in a more expressive way. To make his own paper pulp, he developed a pulp mill.After beating linen to a pulp, he is ready to pour it on the vacuum table.  Bold colours added as pigments to the fibers during the last phase of the beating, accentuate the fantastic sculptural forms as does colouring the bamboo framework. The pigments can bleed into the pulp, marbling the sculpture surface.

Pat began in fiber arts, with weaving. Peter’s “paper fever” infected her though and she started incorporating paper pulp in her pieces. Eventually the paper took over when she invented a new technique of working only with paper fibers, to build up layers of many different types of very watery pulp, on a vacuum table, starting at the front of the painting and working to the back. The final image is only revealed when the painting is finished and can be turned around. Often her inspiration comes from small corners in their garden, sensitive, intimate keys to the beauty of all nature.