Featured Artist: Fouzia Zafar: Ground Floor Gallery

"Paths"

The paths that delineate Kelvingrove Park in the West End of Glasgow are a key focus for Fouzia Zafar's current new series of work. Fouzia has always been struck by how many paths were crammed into a small amount of space on a hill. She has tried to capture some of this in the print "Winding Down Kelvingrove Park." The composition invites you to wind up and down the image."

In this series of works, Fouzia also explores the temporary paths that are created by human traffic on wheels. These are explored in the larger prints, "Tracks 1-4." In these prints the marks have been physically made by a variety of wheels "riding" over a wax coated plate, leaving imprints onto metal. These marks have then transferred on to paper through the etching process.

The accidental nature of who skates, bike rides or walks over the plates is as unpredictable as the type of mark they leave. Fouzia has enjoyed this playful way of creating images and play has always been a key concept in her practice. Play encompasses repeatedly finding, composing, and constructing new tools and processes to explore places and objects and their history, surfaces, and qualities, whilst also constructing new narratives.

Fouzia lives and works in Glasgow. She became a member of the Glasgow Print Studio in 2017 when returning to her hometown after spending 15 years in London. She completed her MA in Fine Art with a distinction at the City and Guilds of London Art School in 2013. Upon graduating she received the Gwen May Student Award, from the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, the Curwen Studio Award. She was voted Printmakers Printer at Cumbria Printfest 2015 and was elected as a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2018. Fouzia has exhibited across the UK and abroad including the Royal Scottish Academy and the Royal Academy, London. Her work is held in private collections, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Ashmolean Museum and Kelvingrove Art Gallery.