“I thought I had come to the island to wrest control of my life back from the woman who had sabotaged it. But I was wrong. My mother was still writing my plot.” – Island by Jane Rogers
“The Island” is my new screenprint, inspired by Jane Rogers’ novel Island. The novel is narrated by the character Nikki Black, and without getting into a full critique of the book, it’s about Nikki not only seeing the world through a distorted, revenge-bent lens, but as a reader you begin to believe her. You get sucked into her way of seeing the world, to the point that her biological mother, who gave Nikki up for adoption when she was an infant and never had contact with her, is the evil, manipulative puppet master of every disaster in Nikki’s life, from her boyfriends dumping her to bad weather. You begin to trust every defense of Nikki’s moods and action, to the point that realistic perspective is completely lost as a reader, as Nikki herself loses reality entirely in the novel.
My screenprint is inspired by not only the environment of the book, which is an isolated island off the coast of Scotland, but the events. Nikki, in her own mind, is victimized incessantly. The waves in the screenprint are not only made of water but fire, crashing into the island with an incredible, completely unrealistic ferocity. I wanted to create a single image that described the entire experience of reading the novel.
Process:
I read Island back in June in a fervent four days, and minutes after I finished I drew the first draft of the image that would become the screenprint:
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