Luke 23:34

 I had the idea of doing a crucifixion earlier this year, but the drawings weren't working so I put it aside.

But now, but now. 

As I mentioned in the last post, I worked through the initial shock and grief of Charlie's assassination. Worked through it not only in the hours spent cutting some recalcitrant blocks, but also absorbing myself in all the chores that I could find. Having done that, I felt I was in a place to try this again. And it has come out okay. Some bits are better than others, but there's plenty in it to make the effort worthwhile.

I think its worth tackling a biblical subject. It's a kind of test. It asks the question, "Is the Age of Postmodern Irony over?" I certainly think it's weakened. We might see some major art coming up, sneaking in at the edges, that actually means it. 

Calypso

 

 A companion piece to Circe. Poor Calypso weeping at Odysseus' departure on his raft. Prefering the risks of the open seas for the possibility of a return to Ithaca over immortality and her love.

Circe

 This year's Rugby Artists Group exhibition is on the horizon, with a theme of "Voyages". There's nothing in my recent oeuvre that speaks to me of voyaging so I had to come up with something. Classical literature is always a good source so the Odyssey seemed ideal. 

Circe was the first that came to mind, with some of the cursed sailors. The play of white and black areas is something thatt has come from the workshops that Eric Gaskell and I run. So I need to get it out of my system. I've got a couple of 10x8 frames in stock that will take this print and the companion piece of Calypso that I'm working on next.

The Dodo of Doom

 

This is another artefact of ours, like Patrick. Some while back we bought a mirror at an auction that had an oak frame with two kind of Dodos carved on it, each looking outwards with their backs to the glass. The frame also has various Roccoco encrustations, acanthus leaves, a scallop shell... A strange and wonderful thing. Even better, the worm-eaten plywood panel on the back bore a pencil inscription saying that it had been "creaeted" in May 1939, It does the heart good to know that as the world hurtled towards war, some crazy loon went to his shed and made this.

Anyway. This is a rather free interpretation of one of the Dodos.

Godiva of Coventry

 

I imagine this as a companion to the Guy of Warwick print. Both characters are engaged in risky acts of heroism, Guy risking life and limb and Godiva risking her reputation. I’m always thinking as I draw and compose and cut these things, telling myself stories about what I’m doing. Putting myself in the heads of the people I’m working on. The larger and more elaborate the composition, the more I’m thinking and explaining things to myself. 

Here are some of the things that went through my mind that impacted on the over all design. 

I wanted an elevated viewpoint, partly to help compositionally and partly representing a Peeping Tom’s eye view. That viewpoint also helped me add other people, so it was not just Godiva and the horse. 

Nuns seemed right to me, but they had to be blindfolded. I imagined Leofric (like all governments) tied in knots by his own edicts. So yes, nuns could lead the horse, but they couldn’t be allowed to see. Luckily Dobbin is the milkman’s horse, so knows the way. I also wanted the nuns to show their character in how they go about their task. The one holding the cross to her breast and putting her whole faith in God (who is maybe acting through the horse). The other feels her way along the wall while trying to see what she can of the ground from under the blindfold. I didn’t use it as a specific reference, but there’s a definite influence of Pontormo’s Annunciation with the nuns. That abstract shape of the robes, with the bare foot extending out the bottom. 

I got a slightly damaged 1/12 scale model horse cheap from ebay that I used with one of my poseable figures as the model for Godiva. This enabled me to get the perspective/foreshortening to my liking. I gave Godiva a bit more weight around the middle than the figure, cuz maybe she’s already had kids, so she could talk to Leofric with the authority of the mother of his heir, whereas a younger, probably more compliant Godiva wouldn’t have challenged him.

Guy of Warwick does it again!

 

I got the news that my Guy of Warwick print has got a place in Wright Hassall’s 175th Anniversary Calendar. I’m so pleased. 

Having my work in the calendar certainly hints at there being a lot of variety in it. I can’t wait to see what else got in. 

As I hinted in my “making of” post, I’ve been working on a Lady Godiva companion print which is almost done. So that should be posted here soon.

Guy of Warwick slaying the Dun Cow

I’ve done this for Wright Hassall’s 175th anniversary calendar competition. The theme is Warwickshire and the deadline 30th September so still plenty of time to get your picture in. So... Well… This.

It’s a stupid story, I know. But it’s spoken to me as I made the picture. The Big Question it provokes in me is, “How can you be a hero when the Age of Dragons is over?” It’s a big, Big Question and really relevant to young men today who wish to win the hand of fair Felice.

I don’t have an answer, but I feel this is a way of asking the question.

 

Maenir: Sounding the mists of time.

This is my entry for the Wales Contemporary/Cymru Gyfoes open exhibition. The exhibition has been delayed from earlier in the year by COVID, but is going ahead in the autumn and early next year. The theme is “Inspired by Wales”. I’d got a number of ideas in my head, but I wasn’t convinced by them. I wanted something that was the Wales I grew up in, or rather the Wales that was in my head at that time.

There’s an animism at the back of Welshness. As if the very stones are possessed of life. A Maenir (standing stone) watches over a field near where I grew up. It was one of the stations of a local history field trip when I was at primary school. I’m sure it’s not as monstrous big as my 9-year-old self remembers it. But it’s big enough.

Local legend had it that once a year at Christmas time, the stone got up and walked the couple of miles to the sea for a drink. Maybe a relic of the old animism that planted it there.

So here she is, feeling thirsty, sat among the fading attempts to overwrite her existence. No doubt she had sisters, but they’ve gone now, along with the monks and miners, the fortresses and foundries.

Welsh culture always seemed predominantly verbal. It speaks and sings its place in the world. So my Maenir’s environment is a verbal one, a ruined castle made of words. The past and present of the little world I grew up in. All past now. But the Maenir still stands.

I wanted the word “Maenir”, too. But I wanted it to be typographically different from the background text, not just a different colour. The letters I used are from the Bodvoc stone, a late Roman memorial stone that was discovered at Margam, not far from this Maenir.

I think the medium of woodcut lends itself to the subject matter. The texture, the recalcitrant material, the whole execution felt more… primitive. Though of course we know it’s not.

Postcard 11: Please Die

This one took quite a bit of effort. It could be the sheer act of having a violent image in your head and wanting to convey that in the execution. Quite tiring. For those of you of a nervous disposition, rest assured that the picture is *really* me gurning while holding a mirror over my head.

And here's today's verse:

Some wish for me upon a star

That I come soon to where they are

And take away in vultures guise

The source of blight that scars their lives.

Here's the original rough idea that occurred to me, then another getting closer to the final image.

And here are the various proofs showing how I cut the different parts. You can see that the background was there from the start, as opposed to other images where it developed as I cut the block.

And another 12 in the bag...

Coventry Open 2020 - submissions

I felt it would be a good plan to get to the Herbert at opening time to avoid the worst of Storm Dennis. Plenty of other people had the same idea, too. So if determination is a sign of quality, we're in for a good show.

Today is also HAP Grieshaber's 111^th birthday, so I'm taking that as a good omen for printmakers.

These are the pieces I put in for selection.

The first is a woodcut called Sounding – The Bells. It will be (I hope) the first in a series sounding the depths of my life. It should add up to an unreliable autobiography, as I drop a weighted line into the swirling ocean of my past, and make images based upon what I hit. Things of great importance and none. Things that affected me directly, or only tangentially.

Anyway, when I moved to Coventry in 1975 I was struck by how the city wore its damage like a badge, saying, "Remember, this is what war does.” We have so many swaggering, bellicose leaders these days, it is a message worth repeating. I think the choice of wood adds to the violence of the image. I also didn't let the ink fully dry between layers, so the colours fight with each other, too.

This second one is a linocut based on a number of drawings I made while sitting in a hospital waiting room. I'd never tried drawing people in public before, and I was struck by how preoccupied everyone was with their books, papers and devices. Trying to forget where they were.

I called it Purgatory because of the waiting to know if the news is good, or bad. And also acknowledging the inferno of the other print.

Just have to wait now to see if either gets in. My own little purgatory.