Sounding the Bells
I had intended to make a series of prints “sounding” the depths of things I had been told in my life. In the end this was the only one I produced. The story goes that the bells of Coventry Cathedral rang the night of the bombing, due to the updraught from he flames. So people believed the building had survived. This woodcut started from the swirling grain of the background block. I would print it differently now, but there is something about the roughness of the print that works with the subject. It is a print that makes people uncomfortable, but some people must have it nonetheless.
Purgatory
Spending time in a hospital waiting room showed me a huge amount of social alienation. Not only did people not want to be there, they didn’t want to be with each other, To me it seems to be a kind of premonition of the “social distance” demanded by Covid lockdown. Perhaps this is why it proved so easy to shut down the world.
Love in an Age of Pestilence: Risk versus Reward
By the latter part of 2020, I felt that lockdown needed to be addressed. So I did three prints on the theme of Love in an Age of Pestilence. This one was the smallest of the three, and it has proved the most popular of them.
Self Portrait at 4am
I will often attempt drawing a self portrait, but I set out to make this particular print with a view to entering the Ruth Borchard prize. In the end nothing came of that, but I am pleased with how the print worked out. People comment that I seem unhappy or deeply serious. But it’s my “looking” face. I’ve tried drawing myself pulling faces, rather like Rembrandt, but it’s quite difficult to maintain.
No comments:
Post a Comment