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

Risk

 I was going to print this as a demonstration with the rolling-pin press but that fell through, so the block has been lurking in my bag for a few days. I woke up about 2am and couldn't gett back to sleep, so I got up at 4.30 and decided to run off a couple of proofs to see what it looks like. I think I need to trim a bit off the bottom line of the ankle, but apart from that I'm happy with how it's turned out. The picture is based on the drawing I did for day 31 of Inktober. The prompt was Risk and I think I'll keep that name.

The original drawing is a very light and airy line drawing, but I felt the print called for it to be night time. Doing feet had brought to mind something Tal R said about drawing people, the difficulties of drawing "nose, eyes ... and feets." I added the moon partly to reference something he said in one of the Louisiana Channel interviews, "The moon sees a lot." The moon certainly has a better idea of what is going on here. Better than me, anyway.

Comfortable Man

 

This started as a drawing I did a week or so in a class run by Eric Gaskell. Then I got persuaded to demonstrate printing at the Rugby Artists and Makers Pop-Up shop in Rugby Central, so I decided to work the drawing up into something I could do to amuse the crowds (sic). 

I decided to use craft foam and my rolling-pin press to double-down on the you-can-do-this-at-home thing. It also seemed an opportunity to show the old artist’s trick of emphasizing something light by placing it against a dark background and vice versa. Using craft foam also made it easy to do the “negative” version just by flipping over the bits I cut out of the other half. 

I like the 2-Tone thing that seems to be going on. It’s like “Whatever happened to the Rude Boys.”

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.

This years Christmas card/Room for the life

 

This has been a hard Christmas to come up with a card for. It’s so very much like last year. And not in a good way. 

In the end I took my inspiration from Kate Bush. Kate’s song, “Room for the life” off her first album led me to the idea of presenting Mary as a woman. So breastfeeding. I don’t think I need say any more. Apart from maybe, “Mama woman aha.”

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.

Another home-made press

My wife has been trying to persuade me to demonstrate printing at public events, using one of my presses. However, even the original car-jack press was just way too heavy and cumbersome to schlep across town or wherever.

So. This one. Using the principle of a proofing press - bed/frame with a moveable roller - I made a bench-hook frame with side rails for use with a handy TALA rolling pin I bought a few years back for another purpose. The first test print has gone OK, even with some crappy cheap ink.

The frame will comfortably take A4+ and has overall dimensions around A3 size so should fit in a bag for transport. All ready to go out and about.