The Familiar Path

At least it hasn't taken quite so long to get back onto the screen again this time and it even feels as if there is some sort of rhythm beginning to develop. Without further ado here is a piece of work being developed.

 

Here are four photographs of various surfaces but all are of the ground as is a lot of my work - they are not monochrome although they almost appear to be; next are the drawings made from the outline sections in the photos:

 

 

I used these to try to figure out what sort of marks would best work on a hard-grounded zinc plate:

 

 

These plates look black because the ground was smoked over a paraffin lamp - this makes it a lot easier to see very fine marks with an etching needle, but more difficult to draw an initial design onto the grounded surface; and here are the plates after the etch and with the ground removed

 

 Finally here are some of the initial prints:

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

There is quite a bit of potential to do further work on these such  top-rolling ; monoprinting onto the surface of one or all or various combinations; multiple overprinting; aquatinting the plates to add tone or off-setting and then aquatinting on a separate plate; and finally the possibility of reworking the plate physically by means of scraping and burnishing as I have done with this plate:

 

 

 

This is not a great photo but this is in fact the fourth state of this plate and in my next post I will show the different prints derived from this and what a difference reworking a plate can make

 

Her are a couple of images that relate closely to both my studio and essay project:

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is it? put simply wet sawdust on plaster but there is a little more to it than that - the plaster is a cast of the paving outside my studio and is the first of a series of such castings made in various places intended to show surfaces and the cracks - edges, borders, boundaries, spaces... between...the surfaces. The central intent here is to think about what happens between... what happens in the space between the surfaces and their edges. Rauschenberg talked about acting in the gap between art and life and the gap I wish to address is parallel but less obvious in that there is something always happening in the space - gap, if you wish - between surfaces ( which is in itself -surface, that is -a very malleable concept). I intend to study this space and its relation to the adjacent surfaces and to try to elicit the process that is ongoing here.

 

The sawdust jus took my fancy.

 

 

The Path of the 4 Ys

OK back a week now and two doses of depression already - I think that's a record -for me anyway; however I am sitting on the train having been saturated on he bike on the way up and I don't feel too bad. Brain is like a washing-machine with vague ideas churning around and the simile is particularly apt in that when you look at the window of said machine you get flashes of colour, fleeting images and lots of very insubstantial foam.

Two tutorial meetings tomorrow and we will see what transpires.

This was where I was at:

 

Two surfaces

Maybe the seaweed looks better than the skin...

 

In passing, does anyone recognise the name H.R. Giger?

 

 

This give you a clue? He did all he original designs for  Alien - In truth its not really necessary to invent fantasy creatures  -they are already here

 

Much later........ got seriously distracted after wring the above and with a brisk twirl we find ourselves already in the fourth week - to try to catch up I will work backwards from here telling what has been happening.

This is Monday and over the past weekend was back in Cloughjordan for another bookbinding course, this time in the company of three of last years sculpture students -Helen Carey, Aileen Nix and Sarah McDowell all of whom seemed to enjoy Mark's teaching very much; my main objective was to go again to the hot letterpress which I did with great enthusiasm (rather than skill).

 

In the studio things have started to happen at last after a very difficult start - I feel that I set a record in getting depressed within only two days of start but the fact that Fiona Quill had a project going in the second week certainly helped to get things moving. 'Symbols' was the name of the project and the object was to visit cemeteries and the produce a response to one's visit in the form of a print of some sort.

 The variety of the response was very interesting as all three years of PCP were involved. I was far more taken with the small Protestant graveyard in St John's Square than the very large but rather uniform Catholic cemetery of St Lawrence's. While walking around I ws faced with something which immediately chimed and I took some photos . Here is the original image:

 

 

 

 

Here are the pair of prints I made from the image:

 

 

The reason I was so taken with the original was that it said everything about life and death to me and I particularly liked the blankness of the old stone because after all that's it isn't it?

 

In the two prints the flower was reworked garishly in P/S on the right and much more true to the original in gouache on the left -maybe that says something about me too.

 

I'm going to post this because it has gone on too long and it is time to get online again.

 

The Path of Aestival Domestic Printing

OK that's probanbly a bit esoteric but I'll leave you to work it out for yourselves .

Anyway the cheerful news is that I have manage to resurrect my scanner without any help from outside - major - so I will begin her with a few drawings from earlier -in fact they all originate in the Londaon trip:

 

This was ink and graphite (approx. A4) and hasn't really scanned that well

 

 

These two were done in the print room of the British Museum

 

 

This was sketched at the Hepworth show and was washed and inked later

 

 

Here are some shots from home printing :

 

This was from a woodcut done with white ink on black paper

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were stages in a multi-block print  form five linocuts

 

 

 

Designs for the castle series -called  Wall

 

 

 

 

 

The three new plates plus the original at lower left-

 

 here they are framed :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was one stage in a two block print of Ronnie Wood - I printed these in L Printmakers

 

 

This was another small series of strips  with text that I plan to take a little further.

 

 

 

This is the first stage of a big copper plate which has been printed as a line etching first and now has been aquatinted and will be bitumened six or seven times to achieve the finish I want  - this is for a commission.

 

 

Finally - someone close to me is always slagging me about the fact that I don't eat meat.

 

 

The Foreign Path

 

Right - Canary wharf - I have always said I should not allow myself to be impressed by Mammon, but when you are here on a a warm June day  it is a bit awing.

 

Not my main reason for going to the Great Wen though - here's one set of reasons:

 

 

 

...and here's the book:

 

 

This show was at the |Imperial War Museum and I had forgotten what a weird place it is - or maybe since I visited it a long time ago my perspective on its exhibits has changed somewhat. Anyway Kennard (thanks Liam for first introducing me to him) has not lost his edge and the most recent piece -designed for the show - was a room of numbers and images which was deeply chilling

It's unpleasant to hear Tony Blair blatting on in his oily manner when you think of Kennard's image of him from the Iraq War:

 

 

The catalogue is a lovely piece of work with a very interesting binding

 

My other main reason for the trip was these:

 

 

 

 

 

 

The younger among our viewers might not know who this is but she was at the forefront of sculpture along with Henry Moore and it is great to see Barbara Hepworth's work again getting its due recognition at Tate Britain. I first saw it t and open air exhibition in Battersea Park in the 1960s and have always been a fan.

Needless to say  a visit to Tate Modern was de rigueur and needles to say there were a couple of really interesting shows. The first was a full retro of Sonia Delaunay:

 

 

 

 

 What surprised me about this was the depth of her involvement with textile and fashion and how extensive were her colour studies, let alone her painting practice; I got the feeling at times that she she sacrificed herself somewhat for her husband - Robert Delaunay - but maybe I am being a little judgemental.

 

The other show I saw here was another retro of Agnes Martin with whom I was not familiar.

 

 

Her work is brutally uncompromising in its geometric abstraction with grids and stripes but very delicate in its colour sense:

 

 

 A review of the show in the Guardian made the point that her work did not reproduce well in print and consequently she was not as well known as other Abstract Expressionists,  a group of which she considered her self a part (insofar as she attached herself to any group -she rejected the whole art world in later life and retreated to Arizona where she produced her last masterpiece a few months before her death at 92.

 

The other exhibition I visited merited two shots, the last being just before I left on the final morning:

 

 

 

This is just the list from The RA summer show and it is huge - if you ever go you will need at least two visits -the first for a survey and the second to go and look at specific pieces: eg six aquatints by Norman Ackroyd and a full room devoted to Tom Phillips book A Humument ( all its variants and editions with the original art work); also it is much better to go firs thing in the morning before it gets too crowded. What really drew me back though were the two large rooms of print -wow!

 

A high point of the trip was the morning spent in the Print Room of the British Museum where I had work by Kathe Kollwitz, Eric Ravilious and Eric Gill brought to my desk and I was able to spend time doing drawings from these (my scanner isn't working so I haven't been able to get my drawings onto the screen but will do if this changes). The atmosphere is so wonderful in there and one is made so welcome.

 

It was quite an intense trip but writing about it at this remove has been good because it has allowed me to think back and to enjoy it again. Btw went to Intagllio Printmakers and bought two burins, a roller and two small but beautiful copper plates ( I'll show the results of that later.)

 

Here are a few recent works:

 

 

This is my A5 note/sketchbook for the coming year which I made earlier in the summer

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the book which will be called Handscapes and is a collection of etches I made on copper at the Printmakers during the summer - I printed them at home and bound them into a book  - reasonably happy with the result.

 

Just to finish  -this is small aquatint from one of those copper plates I mentioned - there was no previous line etching with this but I wasn't aware of the strength of the acid and I was too cautious - each stage should have been bitten for longer.... the learning process.

 

I will be back with more summer work