Blackthorn, Cemex

 In Rugby, the cement works is an ever-present feature of the landscape. Like Mount Fuji.

Maybe I could do a series of these views. Could be 36. Though I suspect I might get bored by then. I've got about six in my mind right now. We'll see how they go.

The thing I found interesting here is that the two parts could each stand alone. I did conceive of them together as a single piece, but I could use them singly or together with some other block(s). All kinds of things could serve as background to the thorns and Cemex could stand behind some other shadowy figure.

Mother and daughter

 I've been working on this small linocut for weeks and not really getting anywhere.There was something here I wanted to do but there was just too much in my life to do anything with the idea. In the end I decide to do a smaller print than I originally had in mind and make it more...I don't know. At least I knew with a small print I could get something done in the time available. In the end it turned out ok.

Salon des Refuses

 For the month of December at the Alex. Work of local artists that have been rejected bu juried shows some time in the last couple years. It coincides with this year's Rugby Open which I failed to be selected for (sob). But really this looks at least as good on your CV. My works showing at the SdR are Kind of Blue, plus the piece shown above with 5 panels from Anna Bloom entitled, "Story without words".

Agnus Dei

 "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." My Christmas card for this year. 

This comes out of a number of places. Nolde for one. His "Heilige Nacht" from his "Leben Christi" altatpiece is probably where it begins, The stable, the newborn Christ. In Nolde's painting the donkey drinks from a bucket. This set me thinking about the animals in the stable. So sheep. There were shepherds, so sheep. Which then took me bback to nights in the lambing shed, and the practice of ewes to clean their offspring. And Blake's "The Lamb". Because I used to tell it to the sheep in the wee small hours.

I like the different textures. Especially the fleece.

Inktober 2023

 I enjoy this little challenge. To just draw things I haven't chosen. Or at least bend the word towards something I want to draw. I post the drawings as I go on instagram and then try to remember how flipbook works and post that here.

Finishing the colour blocks for Anna Bloom

 I managed to get the remaining blocks cut and printed this weekend. I used a sludgy grey-green that was mostly mixed up leftovers. But I actually quite like it. I might do a proper run of the whole lot so that they're as good as they can be, so I'm going to have to intentionally mix a green like this. Scary.

I love how the passion changes in the second half. And that posessive element takes over. Green, the colour of envy does seem appropriate - he becomes jealous of every aspect of her life...

I also did the "I love Anna Bloom red!" with just the red blanket so that it now fits with the overall vibe.

More colour for Anna Bloom

 Did another three today. I think I've finished the red and I've done the one and only blue. Though on the red front I need to try out the "I live Anna Bloom red" in black and red to see if it works, despite having cut it already. I think the red works nicely in these two. I think the blue is OK, thouh maybe could do with a bit more extending.

Adding colour to Anna Bloom

 As I wasn't feeling especially creative today, I made a start to colouring some of the Anna Bloom illustrations. As I wanted to achieve a reasonably close registration, I used the method of offsetting a print off the original block on to the new one. 

 

I'm pretty happy with these two. I think the "red dress sawn with white pleats" does give the effect I wanted.

Laughing Woman

 We were in York a couple of weeks ago visiting our son. We wlked into the city in the early evening and I heard a little way off the sound of a woman laughing. As we passed a pub she was sat cross-legged on a table outside the front of a pub. She roared uncontrollably with laughter, in the manner of the Laughing Sailor/Policeman you used to get in the old-fashioned amusement arcaes. As we passed, I could hear the man on the other end of her mobile phone roaring with laughter too.

It's one of the great mysteries. What was she laughing at, and why?

Northern approach

 As I drive into Rugby from the M6 I catch a glimpse of a cooling tower and some kind of low industrial building lurking among the trees. It's only visible for a few seconds and it's easy to miss, cuz you're driving and paying attention to other things. Then it disappears and it's nowhere obvious when you get to town. I know where it is now, but you do have to search for it. You can find it in other vistas, among terraced Victorian streets.

I suppose I could have parked up somewhere and found a good vantage point and done a proper drawing. But I prefer this brief snapshot, this Augenblick I get when driving along. It's more my fantasy of the place, really. Both the brutalist buildings and the seeming woodland are not what you get when you reach the town. I love that it's both true and a kind of lie at the same time.

Cake

 Someimes the force isn't with you. I attempted a different small print before this. It just didn't work out. My heart wasn't in it and everything I dit to try and fix it just made things worse. So I stopped and binned it. So I was feeling a bit... uninspired.

My wife was wanting me to do something food related for the upcoming Rugby Food Festival. But I couldn't find anything tthatt enthused me. So she gave me a slice of cake and told me to do that. So I doggedly worked through it. I think it's come out ok.. And I got to eat the cake after, so I'm in a much better place now.

Poppies

 We had some huge poppies come up this year. They were nearly as tall as me. I did some crayon drawings back then and moved on. I went back to the drawings and used them as the basis of this woodcut. Just to carry on the theme of flowers.

I'd bought some shina ply a couple of years back to try out and it's taken me until now to give it a go. For sure it's easier to cut than "shed" plywood, but it has a "softer" effect - so I'm not sure if it works out that much different than lino. But still, worth a go.

I printed on some "vintage" paper that a watercolourist had primed. I don't know if the priming was originally pinkish or whether it had aged like that. Anyways, I liked the subtle effect of the brushwork. Interestingly it took a long time for the ink to dry as it had no way to evaporate into the paper...

Sunflower

 

Last weekend was pretty busy and I managed to complete two prints, but didn't have time to post about them. So here they are now.

I had started cutting this one the week before, working from a drawing I did a few weeks ago when the sunflowers were just beginning to open. I like the gnarly look of sunflowers, and at this stage you get a sense of so much packed in there trying to get out. 

I was thinking about the print even as I put pencil to paper. I thought, "I'll cut like this here, like that there..." But even when you do that, the cutting takes you its own direction, and it's still a surprise.

Nothing beside remains: Another colourway

 The original print was used as the front cover for Art at the Alex flyer for the first part of the year.

It's time to make a new flyer to publicise us through til Christmas. So we thought we'd use the same print but using a different set of colours. I used ink that I'd scraped into jars after previous prints, so little thought was given to it. Despite that, I'm pretty pleased with it.

Linocut courses this Autumn

 Eric and I will be running a couple of 2-day linocut courses in September and October. We will be making a single-colour print: working through the process from drawing, through taking proofs, to making the final print. Places are still available to so get in touch if you are interested.

Anna Bloom: Tallow trickles caressingly over my back

 This is the 18th and last picture for Anna Bloom. It is number 17 in the series, the penultimate line of the poem. It is about pain. It is about the pain of his unrequited love. But also the pain that is preferable to doing something about it. The pain of being a martyr to his own passion. A kind of grandstanding, I feel.

I definitely need to go back through these and make colour blocks for about 12 of the 18 prints. Red in the first half, pivoting through the single blue and turning green in the second half.

It has been a very interesting process. Going through the poem line-by-line, searching for some cue for my visual interpretation. Schwitters was one of those artists seeking to create a Gesamtkunstwerk - a total work of art - so everything links together for him, visual, auditory, tactile. Maybe he sought to appeal to the "twenty-seven senses" in his art.

I've also got to think now about producing this in book form. Both an "art" book and a "book" book. We shall see how this progresses.

Anna Bloom: from behind... from the front

The one where our man gets excited that Anna is a palindrome.

"Do you know, Anna, do you know yet?
One can read you from behind, and you, you fairest of them all, you are from behind as you are from the front: “a-n-n-a”."

I felt that the poem definitely hits the bottom of the pit of creepiness here. This takes the "simple girl in everyday clothes" and turns her into a child. I definitely got a slight Rolf Harris vibe in translating that I at least hint at here.  

In the picture I see him utterly worn out by his obsession. Looking at her name in a mirror. I think when it comes to colour, I'll shade the bits outside the mirror in green...

Anna Bloom: I trickle your name...

 Here he is, alone, playing games with her name. "a-n-n-a" he says. His fantasy seems to be moving away from the real, flesh-and-blood girl, and becoming focused on her name.

Tallow was a poor man's candle. It didn't last long, and it smelled. Along with the cold embers, this is a clue that our man hasn't got much by way of material resources. Perhaps he doesn't have much to offer. Maybe she's really way out of his league.

Red bloom, red Anna Bloom...

 

I had mostly cut this last weekend, so it waited all week to be printed.

This line is the reason I translated Anna's surname. The pun is there in the original German, so it needed to be included. Puns are things loved by oh-so-clever young men. It gives you the illusion that you can see things others are just too ignorant to spot. A subtle precursor to the logically faulty Prize Question.

I felt the bloom ought to be a rose. The flower of love and all that. The rose here is taken from my original drawing, but back in 2014 I had imagined Anna from the front, her eyes closed and her nose/mouth obscured by the rose. I like this better. I think it emphasises that Anna isn't party to our poet's fantasy.

Coming just before the pivotal Prize Question, it's the last of the red pictures. Before everything turns green.

Kind of Blue

 Took a holiday from Anna Bloom to do this. The evening before last C was sat opposite me at the table. She was looking intently at something on the internet. So I decided to do a quick drawing while her attention was elsewhere. After a couple of minutes she said, "Oh, no!" and did this. It was too good to miss, so I scribbled a quick biro sketch in the 30 seconds she held this pose.

I decided to print in dark blue. Firstly because I had some, and secondly because she looked kind of blue. I tried some nice paper (pictured), but it didn't come out as well as the not-so-good stuff. Such is life.

Steve Davies: Made at the Alex 21 - 30 July

I've taken over the walls at the Alex for an exhibition until we close for August. 

All the works on display here were made after we moved to the Alex in February 2022. More than that, nearly all of them were made when we were open to the public. When the doors are closed, there is plenty of other work to be done, running and maintaining the place. So it’s something of a surprise to me that I’ve got so much done. Partly because of this limited time window, I tend to work at speed. Make decisions quickly. Let my body take over. Sure, mistakes occur. But the point is to work with them. In the moment. 

Printmaking is a graphic art. As such its roots are in drawing. It comes out of organising and selecting from the world. A way of honing things down, of cutting away what is not essential. A way of dealing with too much information. Printmaking is also a way of sneaking up on your subject matter. The process of cutting – taking away the “non-drawn” parts and working in the mirror image of the final print – creates a distance between the artist and the work. So there is always something in the end that surprises me.

Anna Bloom: Simple girl

 "You simple girl in everyday clothes, you dear green creature, I love you!" Now this is a strange thing to say. Up to this point in the poem Anna has been quite unconventional. She is acrobatic, wears loud clothes, is gossiped about. Suddenly she is a simple girl in everyday clothes. 

Have I mentioned this before? I once knew a guy who had a crush on a 6ft lesbian. He used cute diminutives in refering to her, even though she could probably take him down with one hand tied behind her back. But it was his way of giving his doomed pash even the remotest possibility of a future. So if she's a simple girl, she's in his league.

So that's why I've given Anna a more sophisticated vibe here. Just to strike a discordant note with the statement. Also she's wearing a military style coat to make her green...

Anna Bloom: Cold embers

 

"This belongs in the cold embers (by the way)." The last of the "editorial" comments. Well the last from me, it's the middle one of the three in the poem. I imagined Schwitters, after having stayed up all night writing, throwing his manuscript into the fire which has long since gone out. This is based on one of the first drawings I did for this project, way back in 2014. I still like it. It's the kind of open fire I remember us having when I was a kid.

Anna Bloom: Red is the cooing of your green bird

 

This is based on one of my old drawings from 2014. Who knows what kind of bird it is? Some kind of finch, maybe. Especially if it's green. I love the idea of birds saying things in human language. But all that meaning is not there for the bird. It's just another song that they maybe like the sound of. I think when I get round to a colour block, I'll print it all green. Even the bit that says red. Just because. Or maybe because of Cousin Miles... like Green in Blue.

Anna Bloom: Blue is the colour of your yellow hair

 It's not such an unusual observation these days, is it? Anyway. Her hair is blue because she dyes it.

I'm a little disappointed with some of the drawing, but not enough to re-do the whole thing. I might try a little tweak here and there,,, or maybe not.

Anna Bloom: you dripping creature!

 This is the last line of the poem. There he is in the previous line, burning himself with candle wax while here she goes about her daily life oblivious to his infatuation.

Plenty of guys are like Macbeth's proverbial cat, "letting I dare not wait upon I would" in matters of romance. Our protagonist is just like this. The pain of hot wax seems preferable to him, rather than face the possiblity of rejection.

Anna, we know will be all right. Somebody will dare to ask her out. Likely sombody with fewer "issues".

Art at the Alex Summer Show 2023

 Seeing as we had cleared the place for Warwickshire Open Studios, it made a kind of sense to follow straight on with a big exhibition that would fill the building. 76 works by 40 artists. It's going on at the moment but I've only just done the flipbook catalogue. Here it is

Anna Bloom: Prize question

"Prize question: 

1. Anna Bloom has a bird.
2. Anna Bloom is red.
3. What colour is the bird? "

This sits pretty much in the middle of the poem. And around about when our poet starts to really fall apart. His obsession is starting to get the better of him.

I thought of making this a silhouette so that I wouldn't be giving too much away. As you might guess, the answer contains colour, so let's keep this black and white. In the end I decided that the bird wouldn't be a shadowy silhouette. It gives a little detail in the middle and helps differentiate the bird from Anna's hand.

Anna Bloom: Let them talk!

 "You are - - are you? People say, you would - - let them talk, they don't know how the church tower stands."

I made a lot of abortive attempts to come up with this one. In the end the picture came out of a quick scribble with a biro. I thought the covered mouth and the pointing finger are sure signs of the gossip. After doing this I can see something of a "Paar" by Karl Hubbuch that I have spotted recently. I put this pair outside the church because... Well it saved me the trouble of having to deal with that metaphor directly in a separate print. And also church-goers can be a bit judgy sometimes, can't they?

Fire flight

Regular fire exit signs are so... mundane. I've spent much of the last week drawing running naked women and finally arrived at this design this morning. 

The fleeing woman and the arrow are separate so that I can change the direction of the arrow. The whole thing needs to be tidied up a bit but I like it. She is every bit as "readable" as the ubiquitous stick figure, but brings a bit of joy to a grizzly situation. Everybody expects a bit of nakeness in an artistic environment, don't they? This also illustrates why life models always sit on their dressing gown. 

Either or both parts fit nicely on a card, so you can send it to your loved ones to say, "Flee now!"

Anna Bloom: You wear your hat on your feet...

 Either it's the madness of love. Or maybe she really is a circus performer. Either way she has caught his attention and turned his world upside-down.

Anna Bloom: Red dress

 "O your red dress, sawn with white pleats."

 I've spent a lot of time struggling with these pleats. I've tried out several drawings over the years. Sawn pleats. Pleats don't really make zig-zags, like saw teeth. So what kind of concession do I make to poetry or to the construction of dresses? Definite artist problem. This one came to me in a scribble last night. And I developed the drawing this morning. I also added feets. Because they rhyme with pleats. And I thought I'd double down on the artist problem thing.

As these prints have appeared it has become more plain that they are going to be black/white with blocks of colour. There is so much colour in the poem. I shall have to wait until I have made the red block to see how much sawn-ness is in this one. But I'm happy that it's a dress that somebody could make if they wanted.

Anna Bloom: This belongs elsewhere.

 This is another of the "editorial" comments Schwitters makes in the poem. "This belongs elsewhere. (by the way)", immediately follows the first line. Its as if the poet immediately regrets coming straight out with his love right at the start. So out comes the blue pencil...

Anna Bloom: Beloved of my 27 senses

 "O you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love you!" This is the opening line of the poem, so it's our first sight of the unsuspecting Anna. Over the years I've had lots of thoughts about how to approach this one. Fairly early on, I thought he'd see her when she's out and about shopping. At the market, maybe. The last few days this developed into her eating an apple, so the poor deluded fool can think of her as tempting him.

You only have the poet's word for it, but there is something unconvenional about Anna Bloom. It seems she is gossiped about at the least. Eating in public can do that. Believe me.

Anna Bloom: This belongs in the ashcan

 Another print for Anna Bloom. The poem contains three of these little refrains, "This belongs...(by the way)" where the poet wishes to carry out brutal edits at the very least, or even dispose of the poem altogether. This one I decided to go with a dustbin with a touch of Top Cat about it. For after all, the whole poem is quite comical in its doomed quest.

Who are you, undocumented damsel? (Anna Bloom)

 This is the second of the Anna Bloom illustrations. I had done a simple outline drawing way back when I had the original idea. I've just taken that and made it more blocky. I always liked the simplicity of this one, and the slightly threatening vibe, implying the slightly stalkerish feeling I get from the poem.

I love Anna Bloom red!

 This is the first of the Anna Bloom illustrations. I may tweak it some more, maybe losing the pink background. 

Here we have our tortured lovesick loon desperately caressing his blanket. The drawing "came out of my head," and I even spent time lying in bed trying to imagine what I looked like from the ceiling. But when I was cutting it, Eric Gaskell came and looked over my shoulder and said, "That expressionist painter, that painting..." and I knew instaintly he meant Kokoshka's Bride of the Wind. It's not the same design, but it has the same desperate vibe.

Later on I realised there is something of the Annie Liebovitz photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono about it, too. Funny how these things are filed away in your head.

Anna Bloom returns

I think it was in 2014 I did my own translation of Kurt Schwitters' poem Anna Blume. I posted about it on the Policy Police blog because that was the locus of my arty stuff back then. I also thought that I should do some illustrations, and had a go at some drypoints, but they didn't really work out. So the project has been lurking among the fluff in my back pocket since then.

It's Open Studios time again and I was looking for something to do, so I decided to revisit it. I can't remember how much I may have tweaked the poem, do here's the text again:

ANNA BLOOM Kurt Schwitters

O you, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love you! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This doesn't belong here (by the way).

Who are you undocumented damsel? You are - - are you? People say, you would - - let them talk, they don't know how the church tower stands.

You wear your hat on your feet and walk on your hands, on your hands you walk.

O, your red dress, sawn with white pleats.

I love Anna Bloom red, I love you red! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This belongs in the cold embers (by the way).

Red bloom, red Anna Bloom, how can people talk so?

Prize question: 

1. Anna Bloom has a bird.
2. Anna Bloom is red.
3. What colour is the bird?

Blue is the colour of your yellow hair.

Red is the cooing of your green bird.

You simple girl in everyday clothes, you dear green creature, I love you! - Thee thy thou you, I you, you me. - We?

This belongs in the ashcan (by the way).

Anna Bloom! Anna, a-n-n-a, I trickle your name. Your name drips like soft tallow.

Do you know, Anna, do you know yet?

One can read you from behind, and you, you fairest of them all, you are from behind as you are from the front: “a-n-n-a”.

Tallow trickles caressingly over my back.

Anna Bloom, you dripping creature, I love you!

I'm still quite pleased with the translation - it seems to have survived nine years in my pocket so seems worth trying. We've just had the first 4 days of Open Studios and I've got a couple of prints done, but I've been too knackered to post about them here, so they all come in a bunch, like buses.

PS 10th July 2023. Just revised my translation again. I substitute the word creature for animal. It seems to fit better with the love thing. It was brought to mind by my very occasional remembering of the song, "No, John, No". "On yonder hill there stands a creature..."

PPS 31 July. Finally replaced "clothes" with "dress" - there is enough of an implication of clothes in dress. And dress makes more sense vis-a-vis pleats. I think so anyway.

Skinny Woman

 The starting point for this was one of the life drawings I did back in March. It was one of the 3-minute drawings. It's a scribbly affair - working fast to get it done in the time. But I worked on simplifying it, making it more of a line drawing.

The other week I was browsing ebay (great art-historical source) and came across a few prints by Michael Hofmann (b. Chemnitz 1944). He used a technique like this, so I thought I'd give it a try. First I printed an uncut block in black, then a block cut with lines printed in white over the top. Then finally the colours.

My first attempt didn't work out very well. The lines were a bit weedy and the black and the white wood blocks seemed to fight with each other. So I decided to use lino for the uncut black to give a flatter background. Then I re-worked the white block, giving more variety to the thickness of the lines. I'm much happier with the result.

Detritus

 Rugby Bike Fest today, so we persuaded our neighbour that his Harley Davidson, "Detritus" should be a model for us to draw. I pushed the boat out and did a number of drawings and finished with a linocut, I thought it would be difficult, and it it turned out to be even more difficult than I thought. As always with artists' problems, the question is, "How much can I leave out."