Paradise Lost

 This print is another that started from some of the life drawings I did in August. I decided to combine two separate drawings - together they seemed to give a vibe of alertness, if not alarm. And a naked man and a naked woman imply Adam and Eve, so I needed to include fruit. I did consider the serpent but you can just presume he's scarpered. And something blowing in at the window that has captured their attention.

The still life dates from the time of Lockdown - a course I'd signed up for ended up on Zoom, so we ended up doing still lifes off a screen.  Far from ideal but at least I have suitable drawings in my collection. And the window I pinched from Matisse. Cuz he's a great painter of open windows. 

Four colours meant a lot of cutting, especially as the print area is around A3. I think it was worth it, but having just finished, all the flaws are waving at me right now. 

Rugby Artists and Makers: Go Fourth! Exhibition

 In the same slot as last year at Floor One Gallery in Rugby Art Gallery and Museum - the last couple of weeks of the Rugby Open in the big Gallery Upstairs. (23 January - 3 February)

My work for this exhibition is Poppies. Its a work that has grown on me over time. I like it much more than when I first did it. So I feel it should show its face around the place so that others get to appreciate it too.

PS. 22/01/24 - exhibition hung today, probably the best looking RA&M exhibition to date, Link to the catalogue here.

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.

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."

Blue Coat

 When our son was in the last couple years at school, he needed a new coat. We looked online to see what was available. There were dark blue/black ones available in the type of coat he wanted, but also a VERY blue one, considerably cheaper. He felt it was a no brainer - get the cheaper one. 

Some seven or eight years later he still wears it. I was at his house the other day and saw it hanging among the more sober coats near the door and had to draw it. It was like a gang. And the blue coat had a kind of leadership role.

I like how the print has gone. Something of the Daniel Richter about it with its slightly threatening vibe, I think. It's a 5-layer reduction print in 2 shades of blue. 3 layers in the lighter blue and two in the blue-grey.

Working-class hero

 The original drawing for this was one of my favorites from last year's Inktober. That early-morning cup of tea speaks to me. It makes you want to don your hi-vis orange suit and head off to work.

I'd got some sepia ink left over from the last naked woman print, so there wasn't much thinking involved in choosing the colour. (In fact I've still got loads left, so I could be entering my Brown Period). This is a reduction print with the same extended ink printtted three times. I've never tried reduction printing before, but this print seemed to call for it somehow. It's an additional tool in my pocket, I suppose, ready to be pulled out when I need it.

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.

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,

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.

Sunflowers (Tea card)

This is the second print I did for the sustainability event again on scrap card from tea bag boxes. I did a few drawings of some of the sunflowers in the garden first thing in the morning and copied 3 of them on to a block. 

I did some cutting of the lino while I was there, but didn’t manage to finish on the day. So I’ve finished it off back at home. 

Sunflowers are magnificent. It’s not just a size thing, though that helps. They have that very human habit of moving from perfection to lumpy comfort to decay before your very eyes. And they do it so individually, too.

Still life with lovers

I’m returning here to the drawings I did back in 2019 in Eric Gaskell’s class. Back then, I used one as the basis for a linocut at a workshop of Eric’s that then got accepted for that year's Rugby Open exhibition. 

This particular arrangement has a convex mirror behind the skull and glass(es). In the original drawing there’s an outline of two people seated in the background. I quite liked having people there, but it seemed a bit purposeless. I felt I either had to make that part of the background more explicit or more uncanny. I had been reading a book about Edvard Munch and it was still lying at the side of the bed with one of the versions of the Kiss on the cover. That was what was needed, but not the naked one. The clothed version gave a more contrasty image. It carries its own uncanny baggage, too. Which I like.

I felt I needed to break up the black to the right of the lovers, so I just improvised something while channelling my inner Munch. The result ended up more like the Scream than I’d consciously intended, but I like it. It adds a level of anxiety that completes the whole, I think.

Arrangement: Flowers, Incense, Tank

A still life. I felt it was about time I did another one. The great thing about still lives is that you are in control. You decide what is in… and what is out.

I had done some colour work involving over-printing with extended inks in the “Pestilence” prints and the Christmas card. So this one is the next step. Using pink, yellow and greenish-grey – sometimes over-printed. Sometimes not. The use of colour is intended to camouflage the tank, to make it the third or fourth thing you see. I feel that left as a black-and-white print, everything would be there at once. So it makes the extra bother of colour worthwhile.

I’m trying out mixing textures here. The smoothness of the incense burner. The gnarly raku texture of the vase. The dull flatness of the tank. Again this pushes the tank back, pushing it into the shadows.

This is a picture about feminine pursuits. Our son showed us the Japanese anime series “Girls und Panzer” which gave me the insight into what could be included in what is essentially a flower picture. And broaden the scope of the “girly”.

Tea Card: Still Life with Lamp

 Uncle Death again. Can't go too long without him making an appearance. Seemed appropriate for a tea-card (printed on card from tea-bag boxes) as a giveaway, too. You really have to want one of these to take one, don't you.

We've got a couple of these large glass parafin lamps, and I've been thinking for a while about how to represent them in print. So this is a kind of experiment. The top especially worked out better than I'd anticipated. So I'm quite pleased. I might do a large version one day.

Rugby Open 19 (23 Nov 2019- 11 Jan 2020)

In mid-October, my wife came home from town with a card advertising for submissions to this annual art exhibition. So I decided to give it a go. My first thought was to submit Wolf in a Sheepskin – it was the standard I felt I had to aim for, anyway.

I was booked on a linocut workshop with Eric Gaskell at the beginning of November. Eric is a formidable printmaker and I attend a weekly art class he leads, so I knew I'd learn a lot. This is the print that emerged. The starting point was a few still-life drawings I had done at the other class. The skull, by the way, is a replica belonging to my son.

As I worked on the print, this Ernst Barlach/Kathe Kollwitz vibe emerged that I wasn't expecting when I started out. I was so pleased with it I thought I'd give it a name and enter it for the exhibition. (It's called “Still Life with wine Glass”.

My wife was away that weekend and I was on a roll, so I carried on over the next day or so to create another image. This one inspired by another Feline and Strange song that had been haunting me. Medusa is a song of rape survival and victim blaming. So the image is Medusa haunted by the frozen faces of those who hate her, always reminding her, even when she closes her eyes.

This one is a woodcut. It's different to lino in that it is inclined to fight back, and the act of creating the image requires more... violence. Which seems appropriate somehow.

Anyway, I decided both were better than Wolf, so I submitted both. A panel of 4 people, who change each year, decide which entrants should go into the exhibition. So I felt having 2 relatively different images increased the chance of at least one being chosen.

So I was delighted to get an email confirming that Medusa had been chosen. But when I turned up to collect the rejected print, it turned out that Still Life had been accepted and Medusa rejected. Administrative error. The plague of working life even affects art galleries. Just so you know.

Still delighted, though.