Stancliffe’s use of patina to create a figurative image began with using chemical gun bluing to darken the surface of the steel. This darkening obscured the metal’s identity, distancing it from the typical brightness of steel. Eventually, the artist discovered the potential for creating pictorial elements, beginning with creating horizon lines, and eventually developing this method into the complex method of layering patina and etching out the image of animals and other figurative elements onto the metal “canvas” of steel.
The genesis of this technique is traced back to Stancliffe’s undergraduate degree in intaglio printmaking. The artist was always more fascinated by the metal plate than the resulting print. This interest in exploring metal as a medium has led to this unique method of creating images in metal explored in this body of work.
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