Video transcript | ARTEXPRESS 2023 | Student interviews | Carysse Evans – The Life of the Forest
CARYSSE EVANS: Hi. My name is Carysse Evans. And I studied visual arts at Saint Andrew's Cathedral School. My body of work is called The Life of the Forest. And it is basically an exploration of literature and the character of the forest and how, typically, authors personify the forest to be a character. And it can convey different emotions and pushes along the story. And it becomes its own character. 
My kind of inspiration came from a trip with my friend to Queensland. And we went to Goma. And I actually bought a book there. I saw it-- I found a big coffee table book. And I think it was called The Life and the Love of the Forest. So I kind of played on that with my little title, The Life of the Forest. And it was a large, large-scale book of images of writings from this one author, kind of talking about the history of forests. But then it actually went into the environmental impacts and what's going on with deforestation. And it went really in-depth into that.
 So I think I was really inspired by looking at that subconsciously in my artwork. Well, a few artists that inspired my works were definitely Cressida Campbell. I have very strong love for her and her methods of printmaking. I wanted to do colour prints, but it obviously didn't fit with my theme. But I loved the way that Cressida makes her prints with the watercolours and doing that method of putting the colour onto the block and then printing it after. The colouration is really lovely. 
When making them, I got the reference images. I transferred them onto my lino blocks. And then, when carving it, I would mould the image. And I kind of edited it by hand. So I didn't actually do any technology stuff. I'm terrible with that. That's kind of why I did something that was so hands-on compared to art making. I like it being very easy to work out. And so when I got those images, I transferred them using Mod Podge. I printed them off, stuck them down, let them set. I had to wipe off the paper. It was a very long process. It took me a couple of weeks to do for all my 8 blocks. And yeah, and then I just carved and edited it as I went. 
I changed the images to suit the final product. I remember there was one specific one that I had to cut people out of. There would be areas that I'd have to remake myself. And I found that a really fun process. I think I had one extra one that we didn't include. We kind of culled that one just because it didn't fit in the layout. And I think when I decided to do it, I wanted to have artworks with lots of dark, like lots of black in it and then lots of light ones. So I don't know if they've-- but some of them around have different compositions. And I wanted them to fit together and look like they were sort of similar. 
After getting into ARTEXPRESS, I definitely have considered my pathways into an art degree. And so I am currently studying arts and fine arts at UNSW. And yeah, I'm really excited for it. I think the degree will really take me places. I'm not sure if I want to be an artist. But I think definitely a career in some area is really what I want to do. My advice to you starting your and finishing your body of work is to definitely start early and to communicate with your teacher. I definitely got a lot of help from my teacher, Miss Salier, throughout the whole process. And I definitely think spending a lot of time thinking about it, when you're on the bus, when you're going to school, lunchtimes-- just thinking about it. Your art is inspired by your whole surroundings. So I think that definitely helped me to achieve. 
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