Artist Statement

I’m captivated to the unpredictable, serendipitous, and beautifully imperfect process of printmaking. Each work begins as an act of discovery, a quiet conversation between material, time and touch. I use various printmaking techniques, allowing chance and imperfection to guide the outcome.

My creative process feels like conversing with life itself, just as no one can live without breathing, I cannot live without creating, without feeling and without bringing my own personal experiences into form.

In every fragment, something endures, a trace, a memory, a breath of what once was.

Cyanotype egg shells layered closely together.

What I explore in my work

My work is rooted in attentive looking; at what remains, what transforms, and what quietly holds meaning.

I am drawn to the cycles of life (birth, growth, decay, renewal), the fragility and resilience of the natural world, the beauty of impermanence and incompleteness, the stories held in remnants and fibres, and the dialogue between memory, breath, body, and time.

These themes run through all my work like a thread.

Close-up of a tea stained canvas revealing a lighter layer underneath.

A conversation with materials

I work with materials that carry their own histories; tea, eggshells, botanicals, carbon, fibres, light, and paper that records time. Each one responds differently to touch, pressure, exposure, and decay.

My practice unfolds through many forms of printmaking: cyanotype, linocut, etching, chine-collé, monotype, drypoint, embossing, engraving, and experimental surface impressions.

Rather than controlling the process, I let the materials lead. Chance becomes a collaborator; imperfection becomes a teacher.

Collection of 81 crocheted doily tea bags featuring individual cyanotype photograms of organic plant material

Bodies of work

Each series explores a different facet of these ideas:

What Remains (2025) - A meditation on ritual, memory, wabi-sabi, and the fragile beauty found in remnants.

Eternal Echoes: Carbon Copy of Nature's Cycles (2024) - An exploration of carbon cycles, interconnectedness, and the shared rhythms of nature and human life.

Craft of [un]nesting (2022) - A reflection on changing identity, transition, and the emotional landscape of letting go.

Together, these bodies of work form an evolving archive of cycles; of what is lost, renewed, transformed, and quietly held.

Framed artwork of a leaf skeleton with detailed veins, titled 'What Falls, Returns,' created by Hannelie Stydam in 2025.

An invitation

I invite you to slow down, breathe, and move through the work in your own time. May you find something familiar in these fragments, an echo, a memory, a moment that gently remains.