Finding the path

 

This is  painting I did a few years ago and the subject is something which has always fascinated me ie steelwork . This image originated in an open-topped bus-trip through Porto and under this wonderful steel bridge. I took a number of photos up through the structure as we passed underneath it. I have since been looking for similar subjects and only recently have I begun to find more material:

 

 

Guess where?

So here I am delighted with my objective - to do some more paintings and then to carry these forward into print, using a number of different techniques. All reasonably well and good until I discover Nicola Lopez..........who??

About two weeks ago when in the library, I was trawling the journals and printed out a number of a articles and images that  interested me . Nicola Lopez was one of these.

At home reading the profile and being attracted to her techniques and subject matter I discovered that she works with Pace Prints in NY and decided to follow up. I found out that she has a show actually running in Pace at the present and this is the sort of work she is doing:

 

 

Sorry its such a poor image but it comes from Pace and perhaps they are not keen on having this copied as yet. Anyway you get the picture. There is nothing new under the sun and if you go back farther into her work she was doing gritty pipe-work -sound familiar?

 

Here is a clip of her talking about her latest work:

 

 

What particularly appealed to me was the fact that she was doing reduction woodblocks, but did you see that powered chisel ??!!

It'ld make you sick, and you trying to do something you thought just you had got hold of!- No, I jest, because I think her work is absolutely wonderful: anyway one is forced to think a little more as to how one would put one's own wrinkle on a subject which has been treated by others and I already have some ideas on this related to my revisitation of my past life and brushes with decay and rot.

 

 

 

 Lovely, isn't it? Saw some of that; but decay happens elsewhere too.

 

 

Here is the relation to steel and there is another correlation in that enamel and steel would be regarded as two of the hardest materials..............and even still they rot.

 

As Dave Lilburn said to me  - plenty of scope here.

 

A little study of contrasting surfaces to come.