Rolling Road

A title like that takes me back a long time to the ' Golden Age' of science fiction and a writer long since out of favour called Robert Heinlein - he wrote a massive future book  The Roads Must Roll -which described a society whose transport involved progressively faster travellators moving in parallel until the inner ones were at very high speed- fascinating and imaginative concept. I only later began to realise how fascist and racist was his writing.....as my own political awareness grew.

Here is where I am now:

 

First colour

The key block again

 

The first colour overprinted onto the key - later we will see the results of the other route

 

When I was finished the other day there was some black left so I dug up and old block which suggested something to me:

 

 

...and here is my first effort at blind embossing -something I have wanted to try for ages -thank you Pam for adjusting the pressure on the press.

 

We had a discussion yesterday about the assessments (Jan 8) and it was requested that the blog contain references to our sources -well most of mine are documented in my contextual notebook which will be upgrade further over the holidays but let me here refer to a few interesting people and points.

 

An artist who first I looked at simply for his anti-establishment stance in Germany at the beginning of the 20c I have now come to have a huge regard for is Otto Dix:

 

 

This is a self- portrait and is immediately seen to be different than his caricatures which are quite similar to Georg Grosz. In my context. nb. I have some much more elaborate examples.

 

The other artist I would like to write about is Lucian Freud.

He may not, at first sight appear to fit in with my briefs and ideas but let me explain a little. I have been fascinated and a little repelled by his portraiture for a long time and in fact one of my earliest paintings when I returned to work was a copy I made of one of his self-portraits:

 

 

 

 

 

 (haven't got the copy to hand now but will add in both later). There is a certain lubricity (is that a word?) about the flesh quality in the portraits particularly  the nudes:

 

but there is absolutely no contesting the brilliance of the paint  - what might perhaps be at issue could be the artist's motivation. To me there is more that a little similarity with some of Bacon's work in that there is a distortion  - the artist might argue for honesty but the human might suggest cruelty.

Chance would have it that London Review of Books (LRB) has a review by Julian Barnes of two new books on Freud and the writing has so impressed me that I intend to keep this for my contextual notebook. Barnes' view of Freud not uniformly positive and accords somewhat with what I have been saying. Anyway, I intend to put these two gentlemen together in a collage and we will see what eventuates.

(Just to compound  this I found an Irish Arts from 2007 in the top of the bin in the studio  and who is on the cover - Freud.  The articled inside will be retained for surgery.

Enough of this self-indulgence  -off to do some more work.

 

Another year

A few interesting things have happened since last year not least the fact that I am a year older ..... but actually feel younger...... what was that Gray chaps name with the picture? Except in this case the face is getting more wrecked and the picture is getting younger

Its all about how you feel inside!!

Last Saturday morning I stood behind a market stall for the first time - the Milk Market in Limerick - a lovely crisp morning and the odd bit of business done!.. One print :thanks Emily!

Hope to help again soon and really well done Barry for all the work you put in:

 

Back to the school house; this morning we had an exam for CCS1 and thankfully I think it passed off ok - and to complete the CCS day Kieran gave us back our essay on Mirrors of Enigma

 and once again, thankfully the result was good; equally good was the constructive comments that Kieran passed on as to how to improve the product .

More collage work today and I received great tuition from Luke as to how to use the flat-bed scanner in the multi-media room to produce high-res images - maybe the image making can move forward now without having to achieve high levels of virtuosity with P/S.

Today's improvements:

 

 

as you can see -getting slightly more disturbed

 

 

 

 this is an image that is developing and has potential for the future as Protest;

in the second one almost all the elements are from photos I have taken.

Blades on the path

Two modes of cutting will be demonstrated:

[this is the more formal approach]

 

 

More collage..... and more to come;    the last one here is the possible genesis for a later screenprint but before that I intend to remake it on the basis of a number of suggestions from Sercan eg. : reduce the size of the globe; make the mouth a little more mysterious; anyway I wasn't happy with the rot section.
I think I'll do what I do best  ie take the pictures myself

More blade work , but pen and pencil first - this is to show the development of an image for w/cut:

 

the first rough sketch

 

getting more direct

 

pencil

 

a bit more specific

 

 

 

more general

 

 

simplifying - but the word the wrong way round

 

a variety of different tones

 

the decision

 

the cut begins - oh joy!

 

half - cut (...you wish)

This is a theme which may well lend itself to a series - I'd still like the do 'Life of Wayne Rooney'

Come back Gary Larsen , all is forgiven

Any ramblers along this path will know my predilection fr ground art in all its forms.

However, I think this one surpassing good:

 

suggestions as to its deeper level of meaning would be welcome

 

Today we handed in essays for Kieran Cashell's seminar 'Mirrors of Enigma' and I believe -other than feedback on essays there may be no further lectures - that's a pity as I have found them extremely stimulating and I intend to continue to work through the book list that he gave us at the beginning. The most recent acquisition (library) has been The Painting of Modern Life by T.J. Clark which 'describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives'. (1999).

 

I had only begun to read the section on 'A Bar at the Folies-Bergere' by Manet :

 

 

...and what an interesting piece of work this is with so many undercurrents flowing...

 

when I came across this contemporary sketch from the cartoonist Stop in Le Journal Amusant :

 

 

 

 

whose caption read:



UNE MARCHANDE DE  CONSOLATION AUX FOLIES-BERGERE : Trans ; Her back is reflected in a mirror; but, no doubt, because the painter was distracted, a gentleman with whom she is chatting and whose image one sees in the glass, does not exist in the picture itself. - We  thought we should repair this omission (Clark 1999, p. 241)

You just cannot get past the smart-alecks, can you?

 



A bend in the path

So etch is finished for now and we move back again to relief and screenprinting, and for your correspondent it will be relief so the old sharp tools will be on the move once more - I'll be honest (amn't I always?) I really am looking forward to this; the two briefs are 'Protest' and 'Humour' but the tutors are at pains to point out that one's project can certainly be a mix of these. I have an idea but I am not sure yet about how it will work; other tutors having seen it seem to think it has great possibilities; tomorrow I will do some drawings on paper the size of the block and we shall see what transpires.

The edition was liberated from the press the other day and certainly the prints benefited and they much flatter. When  Sercan asked for a print for the wall I wasn't sure and first I gave him the mouth with the Francis Bacon:

 

But afterwards he came back to me and said he preferred the big one even though it wasn't on really good paper:

 

I suppose I would have to admit that I was quite pleased with this and I think I will do it again with more suitable paper.

 

This morning we had a full crit ( class divided into halves and each person had to stand at the front with a selection of their work and speak to the class about it, and receive what was very constructive criticism from class and tutors. All were agreed that despite some initial nervousness it was a tremendously beneficial exercise.

On the train in I wrote a 'Review' which, even though I didn't use it directly was useful in formulating ideas and it made me think about where my project is going next. I am going to file this in my sketchbook and I will use what I thought of in future posts.

 

Had a bit of a Pauline flash of revelation today and not the most complimentary to self.

I have been working on an essay for Mirrors of Enigma ( Kieran Cashell's seminar) and my chosen topic has been a survey of a recent exhibition of self-portraits, in relation to identity and narcissism. In passing, I have to say that the word count was quite low and considering the complexity of the topics I found it difficult to keep the numbers down. It's finished and ready to go.

The Pauline revelation came this afternoon when I suddenly realised that my etched project had been largely about a self-portrait:

 

 

 

Guess who ..... in full flight

 

The thing that worries me however is how many people have already thought this and are too polite to say?

OK,  form an orderly queue on the left please.

 

Have done a good bit more research and have rooted out a number of artists who may be useful during next phase and quite a few images I will use in the making of more collages

 

All will be revealed.

Back along the path

I realised on doing the last post that I was missing a couple of steps in the etch process so just to put that right:

 

The Drawing

 

 

 

The key print

 

 

the aquatint

 

The finish

 

 

........and the edition

 

 

 

These are now in the press, hopefully being flattened

 

.....and the other:

 

 

 

the key print

 

the aquatint

 

the finish (only on card - for better paper)

 

 

Ok fairly up to date with he work but there is one other thing I may not have mentioned and that is I was lucky enough to win three lovely books in the Ormston House new members raffle:

 

 

the title of this is House : difficult to read in this image

 

More artists next

 

 

scratching the path

Very remiss ...... also very tired !

Time I showed why I am tired :

I can't remember if I already showed this but it was a drypoint on acetate drawn from another teeth grouping and was used as will be seen later

 

 

 

and some monoprinted variations

 

The first straight print from the first plate

 

 

A couple of monoprint variations

 

 This was where it started to get interesting:

 

 

:

 

then the aquatint was done and a second plate was introduced:

 

 

again with variations

 

 

 

Meanwhile the other image was in full swing going through a similar process:

 

 

 

monoprinted

 

 

a la poupee (ink painted on to the plate surface)

 

 

and this is with the aquatint plate in place  - I will do this again later with good paper

 

Here is the wall in one of its most recent incarnations:

 

Running in parallel with the printing has been an increasing investigation into the business of collage  which I would have to say am really enjoying  - particularly disemboweling my past life

 

 

 

 

What you have seen here are only some of the prints that have been done so we have been very busy in etch block

 

What I will do next is to start having a look at some of the artists who have been interesting me recently and who will have a bearing on where my work goes next - both in the studio and the workshop.