Naked woman in an armchair

 Another naked woman postcard. This time from an elevated standpoint. This one was a great opportunity to use the black outline of the chair to make a stark contrast with her body, and make as little use of outline as possible. In the original drawing, she had bare feet, but I thought if I gave her socks, I could use that contrast even more. Also, it neatly avoids the Artist Problem of feet. I guess this gives a slight vibe of Vallotton, which is nice…

She has something of a coiled spring to her. As if she wants to get out of the chair and put some clothes on. That’s something that came out accidentally in the cutting and printing. Something I quite like.

Sofia

 This one sprang out of a kind of challenge. Matt Pooley was at the Alex and did one of his strange vegetable people on a piece of fabric. He suggested we could all add something and make it into a communal piece of work. I felt his character looked a bit uncomfortable so I thought I'd add something for him to be uncomfortable about. Hence this rather sensuous woman. To make him blush.

She's a bit stolen from Nolde's Mann und junges Mädchen. I felt she needed that really graphic woodcut look. I hand coloured the rose for the postcard versions. Less bother than making another block.

Bethany said she looked like Sophia Loren. Hence the name.

Rubber woman

 I needed to get back to doing some postcards. They allow me to work with smallish offcuts and just mess around with various motifs and ideas, and not worry too much about the final result.

This one is based on one of the women from Matisse's Joie de Vivre. Matisse has a way of playing fast and loose with anatomy - making it subservient to the design.

I don't think my design is entirely successful, but I really like the feet. And we all know feet are a big Artist Problem. I think I might give this one another try at some point. Maybe something even more stylised.

Flight to Egypt

 This year's Christmas card/Jahresblatt had a very slow and difficult gestation.And it only really took form in the process of making it. Some bits didn't work at all so I had to cut some out and insert a new piece. Anyway. I kinda got there.

I quite like that it has something of Gustav Heinrich Wolff about it - in the almost sculptural quality of the figures. Subject wise, I suppose it's more subtle than "Herod the king in his raving," which was a contender. But its about the slaughter of the innocents, nonetheless, It says Dark Times are here, but there is hope. At least this child gets away.

Anyway. In my own irreligious way, I'm beginning to see Christianity as our only hope of redemption. The moral core that can allow us to escape tyranny and the collapse of civilisation.

Fish head

 

Sometimes life gives you something to draw. Other times, Morrisons does.They had a bargain offer on a whole salmon that had been ready filleted. So what elso do you do with the head, but draw it.

Then of course make a print of it. I needed to do something black-and-white, and this seemed ideal. I like how it came out. Eric Gaskell came by this afternoon while I was working on it. He commented on my tendency to bring death into my work. Which of course I have done here. I've also been thinking of some drawings by Diether Kressel I've seen of fish heads. His look more... philosophical about it, whereas mine seems much more tortured. Somehow channeling some of Otto Dix' war pictures.

Nothing beside remains

There are a couple of things that feed into this. The first is Tal R again. There’s a video of him talking about his series of Copenhagen paintings. In it he says in any city, any town, there are places that haven’t been tidied away by history. Places that no longer have any purpose, any meaning. They are the realm of the dead. They are the places where we feel the dead walk among us.

The second thing is Landscape. I’ve not really done any landscape. I’ve always felt I’d do landscapes when the Nazis take over. A bit like Otto Dix. Maybe they have taken over now. But I wanted to take landscape and put it in an extreme portrait format. Kind of Marine tipped on its end. And abstracted somewhat. So I’ve got room to get out if I want.

What we have here is the gable end of the Alex. The remains of the house next door left after it was demolished for redevelopment. The lamp that I think lit an advertising hoarding that was there for a while. The gated access to the dead space at the side of the car park next door. The world of dead people.

I wanted to call this, “Only dead people understand” but my wife didn’t like it. In the end I decided on the line from Shelley’s Ozymandias. Conveys some of the same things I think. I’ll put the poem here to save you having to look it up.

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

PS Image is cropped somewhat top and especially bottom cuz I can't fit it in the scanner. I'll work on getting a better image anon,

PPS Here it is

Rugby Open update

 

 It's truly a monster show. They whittled down the 500+ entries to 245. Both my works are on the big pink wall that greets you when you come in. You can see one in the photo, at the top next to the words. I'm really happy with the Art Gallery going for the Salon approach amd getting as much as possible in. It gives the whole thing a rather joyous vibe I think.

I guess this means I have to go for the hat-trick now and enter the forthcoming Coventry Open. You can also see work by my "rivals" in the photo: Lu Wenjuan (top of the left hand column) and Val Hunt (middle of the right). The 3 of us have 4 works each in the Leamington and Rugby Opens. Let's see how we get on in the Coventry.

Rugby Open Exhibition 2022

 Heard today that I'd got two works accepted for the Rugby Open 2022. They are my two "fruit" pictures I made around the food festival earlier in the year: Apples and Pears and Figs

I submitted the Pink Chrysanthemum as well, but that didn't make tthe cut.There were over 500 entries this year, but I don't yet know how many that was whitled down to. The preview event is on Friday evening, then the exhibition runs from 3 December until 4 February 2023.

Self Portrait in Blue

 I noticed that the Ruth Borchard self portrait prize is coming up at the beginning of next year. That meant it was getting on for two years since I did the last one. An interesting two years ago. Interesting times as they say. My beard is certainly whiter now.

My life is unexpectedly busy now, being deeply involved in setting up Art at the Alex, so I have to take every little opportunity to do some work. I did a couple of drawings last week and then did the whole cutting and printing this weekend as my "public performance" at the two artist days here.

Some people commented that I don't look happy, but that's my natural drawing face. I do look Kind of Blue, hence the heavy use of blue ink and the title.

As an aside, I have tried pulling faces to draw, a la Rembrandt, and it's quite hard to keep it up. Your face hurts afterwards. So to get something that recognisably me, you tend to get my "looking" and drawing face. There's only so many things I can do at the same time.

The picture is a photo of a print hanging up to dry, hence slightly distorted, but the colours are pretty true. I might replace it later with a scan, or maybe not.

PS. Decided to just add the scan at the bottom - this one's maybe a bit bright, but there you go. You'll have to see it in real life to decide.

Inktober 2022

 Just got to the end of Inktober this year. It has been a challenge. Very few of the words have lit my boat, as it were. But it's been worth pushing through that. Getting outside my comfort zone. 

I also give myself the limitation of not spending much more than 20 minutes on each one. After all there are lots more things to do in a day. So they are almost all disappointing in that they are not finished, polished works. But they have been opportunities for me to try different things, so are valuable in that sense.

PS It must still be Sunday in Google Land, hence the date stamp on this post.

PPS I just noticed that I didn't update #16  word. Ir should read "Fowl".

First Light

 Another postcard. Sometimes you see something and the shape is so cool it burns itself on to your retina. You know you have to use it. Starting from that lovely bum in the middle, I had to work out what other elements to include and organise them around it.

I wasn't sure what to do with the background until quite late on. I walked into a room and saw the shadow cast by the venetian blinds on the wall and bed head. I love the sharp angle it makes in contrast to the round smooth bum.

In the end I feel it has more of a Shunga vibe to it than any of my other naked women. Like Utamaro at his most restrained.

Personal Archaeology

 I found this in the bottom of a drawer. Letter to The Guardian December 16 1986. I'd half forgotton about it, but Gosh. Half a lifetime ago and I was a master of art bollocks even then.

There are lovely bits in it, and some of it makes me laugh, even now.

"Nostalgia" appears to have gone the way of all things, replaced, perhaps, by "ideology" as the insult of choice for both sides in an argument.

Plus ca change...

Pictures at an Exhibition (Tweaked colour)

 So. Having tried out over-printing the same block with different colours, I'd got a better idea of what I wanted to achieve. In the first version I printed an orangey red over a more greeny blue, and the result was a tad blackish. This time I used a more purply red over blue (still a bit greeny), resulting in a better purple colour.

I wanted to make more of the yellow to contrast with the purple, so I made another block to print some yellow over the white as well as over the other colours. I'm happier now.

Pictures at an Exhibition (Colour experiment)

 I made several drawings of gallery visitors when I was looking after various exhibitions over the last year. I wasn't sure what to do this last weekend so I went through my sketchbooks in search of something. I combined these people who came and looked at the gallery on different occasions and made the place look more crowded than it was.

I thought I'd try adding colour by inking the block partially with different colours and see how they come out. I'm reasonably happy with this, though I think I'd like to tweak the colours a bit and maybe use masks when inking - what I did was just roll the ink roughly where I wanted it. I also didn't really let the ink dry between impressions, so it's overprinted quite patchily.

Leamington Spa Open 2022

 

Both my entries were accepted for this exhibition. They are Bent Flower 1: Tulip and Bent Flower 2: Yellow Chrysanthemum. Both were done during the Open Studios weeks in June/July. I felt they were strong, but it's nice to have that confirmed, as it were.

The exhibition is at Leamington Spa Art Gallery and Museum at the Pump rooms and will run from Friday 7 October to Sunday 8 January. So do check it out if you're over there during the next few months.

Postscript 6th October. Just been to private view - There were 350 entries to the exhibition, of which 135 made the shortlist which was whittled down to 48 for the show.

Handprinted

 This one kind of sneaked in today. I'd only planned to do the carnation print but I had the need to do something black and graphic as well.

Last night I saw a Man Ray photo on Ebay. Its of a naked woman (Turns out it's Meret Oppemheim) posing with a priting press. Probably a litho press, with a big wheel. She has her hand to her head in a mock "wiping the sweat away" gesture, and she had black ink, from her elbow to her fingertips. As if applied with a roller. I loved that ink and couldn't help wonder how her arm would print up.

So here's a postcard done from my quick scribble of the inked hand. Handprinted.

Bent Flower 4: Carnations

 There's a Youtube video of Tal R making a woodcut print. During the process he says, "If it looks good on the block, it'll look good in the print." I've come to understand that view. If a block doesn't look good, making a mirror image print won't be enough to cure it. And a good-looking block has never let me down. Looking at the blocks for this print as I cut them, I knew they were coming good.

Carnations are among the earliest flowers to impinge on my mind. My parents had red ones, white ones and pinks in the garden. They seemed to have a weed-like character. You could pull bits off, stick them in the ground and tthey would grow. A great lesson to us all.

Figs

I felt it was my last chance to do some figs this year, with Autumn coming and all. I picked some ripeish ones and did some drawings before I ate them. Erich Heckel did a lithograph of 3 figs and a leaf in 1965, so this is me taking my hat off to him.

I decided on woodcut because it seemed a bit more “heritage” for the Heritage Open Days we’re doing at the Alex. And I like the texture. 

There's a sensuality about figs and I cut the one in half to emphasise their edibleness. And I wanted to eat some there and then. I'm pleased with how the colours work together on this one. I've been trying not to be intimidated by colour and have been letting each one assert itself as it will. I also rmember the Beano and other comics from when I was a kid and how sometimes the register would be a bit off and things would happen to the image. Not sure what, but "things". So I've been packing around the blocks on the press to achieve just the right level of offness...

Apples and Pears

 More colour in an Expressionist/Fauve manner. There's a food and drink festival coming up in Rugby, so the Alex is going to dispay some food/drink related art. So this is part of my offering.

Like the flowers, I started from a crayon drawing and then worked in this registered/not-registered manner in the print. I'm really quite pleased with how it's gone.Colour definitely has its challenges, but I'm trying not to be scared of it. I found an old frame thatt I'd bought in a box of odds years and years ago - it's wood with a bakelite insert with fruit and flowers moulded into it - it quite suits this picture. If I can get mirror plates on it'll be my entry for the Leamington Open. 

I think I'll try a few more fruit/veg/meat pictures and then push the subject matter in a different direction.

The next couple weeks at the Alex are part of the Heritage Open Days events. So for this I'm planning to revert to black and white and on a smaller (postcard) scale,

Alexandra Arts Poster

 

Channeling my inner Toulouse-Lautrec this time. Still working on the idea I used for the postcard print I did earlier. This one's A2 size with space to write our "what's on" down the right hand side.

Alexandra is certainly a challenge - it's taken so many tries to get a face I'm happy with. This one's pretty good I reckon. Still struggling with the pub sign, though. 

As time goes by I can print these using different colours so people can see at a distance when things change.

Bent Flower 3: Pink Chrysanthemum

 

This is the third of the Bent Flower prints I did for Warwickshire Open Studios. I wasn't sure I'd get a third one done before close of play yesterday, but I hadd a big push and didn't wait for the inks to dry properly. I'm pretty happy with the results.

I quite like the graphic/not-graphic thing that I've got with these prints, through not using a proper key block. My original drawings werre done quickly in crayon, and I wanted to maintain that vibe in the prints. Here's the drawing for this one.

It's been an interesting exercise, and it's given me an insight into the technical and emotional processes of my work and has helped somehow to cleanse my mind. I also feel I've taken on the WOS scene on its home ground and acquitted myself well. I'm happy.

Bent flower 2: Yellow Chrysanthemum

Doing these flowers has been quite liberating. It has somehow given me an empty space, a void where I can nonetheless be me. It has allowed me to see the energy, the tension that goes into my work. 

There was a category in this year’s Open Studios called, “Beautiful Botanicals” and they posted a video the other day of artists who had put themselves in this category. It was interesting to see the stuff gathered there, a feast of vegetable porn. There were a couple of things that looked like the outcome of some sort of fight, but most did nothing for me. So I’m glad I’m doing this. It’s a bit like invading somebody else’s territory. You have no idea what the “right thing to do” is, so you end up parking your tank on somebody’s lawn. A great faux pas. 

Having written the previous blog, I followed my own link to Tal R’s web site and discovered he has an exhibition at Victoria Miro’s gallery entitled “Untitled Flowers.” Here’s a transcript of part of the video publicising the show. 

“I think the worst thing a painter can do is flowers. I mean if somebody would have told me ten years ago, “One day you’re going to paint flowers,” I’d have been very embarrassed. Flowers in some ways are so banal. You pick them up, you put them in some kind of pot, then they fall down and then you throw them out. Today I would say it’s just too good to be true, And I think the older you get, you understand the possibility of banality. That sometimes you walk into something that is banal. It’s much better than to walk into something that on the surface is very complex. 

“What does it mean to draw a flower? It actually means you try to understand, try to organise. But that’s almost impossible, because there’s just too much information. There’s too much information in anything you look at, beside the white wall, So you try to organise. But organise according to what? And I think the worst thing an artist can do is organise just according to aesthetics, That’s a wrong turn. It’s understandable an artist would organise the world according to aesthetics, but it’s wrong. You actually have to organise it, as strange as it sounds, according to something that has nothing to do with flowers. It can be organising flowers according to other experiences, memories you have in life. So that means to make art is always a kind of a carnival. You dress up the world to be able to walk into it.“ 

This is just so right. And we all know that organising the world according to aesthetics only leads to fascism. Hope I can find time to see this exhibition.

Bent Flower 1: Tulip

 

Tal R says something along the lines that amateurs are right when they choose subjects that are rejected by serious artists. Flowers, say. It helps bring the viewer into the work. “Oh its a flower. I know flowers.” It enables them to take the first step on to the dance floor. But the trick is to bend your subject towards what you are trying to say.

When we did a whole term on flowers in Eric Gaskell’s class, I was delighted. I’m not a person who is naturally in sympathy with flowers, so I relished the opportunity to get to grips with their colourful blousiness.

During that time I learned two things about flowers:

1. Most of them are twisted and deformed, just like the rest of us;

2. They move. So you can’t hang around too long when making your drawing.

For Warwickshire Open Studios this year I decided to go back to the drawings I did that term and use some as the basis for some prints.

This tulip is the first one. A flower tortured by me looking at it. I think I’ll manage at least one other before next weekend is out.

In advance of Open Studios

 Warwickshire Open Studios is fast approaching. The event proper (Summer Art Weeks) will take place between 18th June and 3rd July. We will be open at the Alex on the 3 Saturdays and Sundays and the 2 Fridays.

As an advance taster aroud 100 WOS arttists are exhibiting in the Litten Tree Building in Coventry from 2nd to 11th June. My Godiva of Coventry print is there, too, The exhibition's on the 4th floor (I think), so be prepared for a climb.

New studio shaping up

 My studio is now moved into the Alex. Still needs some tidying up but my little corner is pretty much ready for this year's Open Studios. Just have to get the rest of the place sorted now. Did a bit of test printing last night, too.

Reasons I have been so quiet lately #2: Alexandra Arts

 

This is the big reason, really. My wife and I have bought the former Alexandra Tavern/Arms in Rugby. And aim to open it as a Cafe/Gallery, plus studios, plus teaching space, plus… We’ve spent the last month working on it as best we can with no money. But hey, we’re artists. 

The print above is my first attempt towards a sign or logo. I liked the idea of Alexandra painting. I added the Alexandra Roses as a nod to her good works. I did also toy with the dea of Edward VII posing nude… but maybe not… yet.

Reasons I have been so quiet lately #1: Rugby Artists and Makers Exhibition 2022

 

I’ve been busy with this exhibition, especially the last couple weeks. There are 33 artists this time, so a good few more than last year. As you might expect, it’s another diverse collection. You can see this year’s catalogue here. This year we gave ourselves the theme, “Movement” and I suppose we more or less stuck to it. You can check out the flipbook catalogue here.

I did a version of the Tiger Dancer as a framed print for the exhibition. I roughly cut a piece of old plywood to create the colour block and then cut out the “flesh” parts only. The extended pink and yellow inks are also printed over the black, so the grainy texture carries over the black areas as well.

Hilde in Köln/Hilde in Cologne

 

I had come across Karl Hubbuch’s double portraits* of his wife Hilde some years ago. But more recently I’ve become more aware of Karl’s photographic work, and also that of Hilde herself. Hilde was a student of Karl’s at Karlsruhe and then went to the Bauhaus at Dessau where her photographic work shows the influence of Moholy Nagy. They divorced in 1932, which enabled Hilde (being Jewish) to flee the immanent Nazi regime to her home in Austria and thence to London and New York. She became a society portrait photographer and had work published in the New Yorker among other places.

Anyways. The couple visited Cologne in 1928 and Karl took a wonderful photograph of Hilde climbing a staircase wearing a magnificent overcoat. The photo really reminded me of my wife in the 1980s. The funky hairstyle, the round glasses and she sure would have worn a coat like that. 

So I’ve transported Hilde to the outdoors, down by the river with the twin towers of Köln Cathedral across the water.

* Hilde Twice I and Hilde Twice II were originally a single painting, Hilde 4 Times, But KH cut it in half after it got damaged in storage during the Nazi interegnum.

Contrasts exhibition - visitor comments

 

 We took the exhibition down yesterday and I've transcribed the comments from the visitor book below.

One thing we did was to use the glass cabinet that's a fixture of the room to display stuff in. We both put in some greeting cards, and I also put in sketchbooks, tools and lino blocks to show how things were made. From the comments you can see that this was well received. I saw that when I was there in person, too. Kids are especially interested in how things are made. 

We both also tried to say something about each work on the labels. Not just title, medium, price. And that seems to have been appreciated, too. Worth going to that effort.

The picture above was drawn in the visitor book (it's the pictures on the poster). I love it. First fan art. I love how we look like we're sat in a car or something. An old Cortina with STEVE and MAGDA on the windscreen.

Anyway. Here's the comments:

• Very interesting exhibition and lovely work. Interesting to explain to my 8 year old the different processes.

• Really enjoyed this…. (illegible)....Interesting work

• Thank you for the lovely exhibition and for taking the time to explain your techniques

• Fab Exhibition! Well done both of you. I love the contrasting styles/medium etc – which work so well together. Bold black and white prints v lucid watery colour studies. Brilliant artists – stunning arresting work! :)

• A lovely visit, sorry for the noise and mess (we’re his carers and he’s just having a turn)

• Great exhibition. I love the cabinet filled with sketchbooks and the linoprint – a lovely sight! Great fluidity to Magdalena’s :)

• Magical watercolours – a delight to see from a beautiful soul.

• Impressive water colours! Thought provoking prints!

• Liked all the paintings, especially the anemone with its different colours

• Great exhibition, love the styles. Well done for getting it together so quickly.

• A really good showcase for a couple of local artists. Please keep up the good work.

• Interesting

• Just time to uplift my spirits with this exhibition. Best linocuts I’ve seen for a good while from Steve Davies. Particularly intriguing and beautiful = Magdalena’s paintings of eyes + her descriptive narratives.

• Fabulous exhibition!

• Really lovely exhibition! Good contrast between the two artists. Interesting to see the printing process in the cabinet.

• Ringing the Bells – lovely. My grandparents lived through the Coventry Blitz. This brought back fond memories of them. Eagle Owl and Highland Cow. Wow! Absolutely fabulous exhibition. Great work from both artists.

Tiger Dancer. Card for the Year of the Tiger

 I found it hard to come up with an image for this year. Tigers in pictures can just look way too cuddly to convey the appropriate sense of danger. In the end I stumbled across Nolde's Dancing in front of the Golden Calf, which seemed suitably crazy to me. So I stole one of his dancers ad gave her a tiger skin. That's the year ahead I'm seeing. Risky and somewhat bonkers.

Linocut hand coloured with pink and yellow ink.

Contrasts: Exhibition at Floor One Gallery

Today is the first day of this exhibition.

Rugby Art Gallery and Museum had a last-minute cancellation, so the word went out to the Rugby Artists and Makers Network. Magdalena Edwards and I reckoned we had enough wall-ready art between us to put ourselves forward at a weeks notice.

We hung it yesterday, and all things considered it looks pretty good. Here’s a little brochure Magdalena did of my stuff. And here's Magdalena's.

If you’re around the next couple of weeks do pop in.

 Added 6 Feb 2022 - link to post about visitor comments