Meditation: Tea Ceremony

I needed this. It’s to calm me down after all the lockdown nonsense that has been putting me on edge.

I try to be like the Turk in Candide and not enquire as to the goings-on in Constantinople. I try to cultivate my garden with my own hands. But people do pull my coat tails and bother me with news of which Mufti has been murdered this month.

So a cup of tea.

This meditation is close to A5 size rather than the usual square cards. Mainly to fit both hands in. And I also have some frames that this would fit.

I hadn’t realised how awkwardly I hold a spoon when I stir. So I had to record it. Maybe I’ll change now that I’m aware. Or maybe not. Such is the power that really looking gives you.

Accepted for Rugby Open 2020!

My print, “Love in an Age of Pestilence: Minuet” has been accepted for the Rugby Open exhibition. Further lockdowns notwithstanding, it should now open on 11th December and carry on to 23rd January. You can find the original post about this print here.

I quite like entering these competitive exhibitions. I find having a target to aim for concentrates the mind. Though I must admit I get quite antsy waiting for the decision.

I wanted to address the whole covid/lockdown/distance thing and felt that now was the time to do it. To put up or shut up, as it were. I do feel I’ve got it out of my system in this print and the other two that didn't get accepted (here and here). So I hope I can now focus on other things.

I’m glad the judges picked this one. It’s very much an antidote to my print “Purgatory” that got accepted for the Coventry Open in the immediately pre-covid era. Back then I seemed to tap into a level of social alienation that I have increasingly felt needs challenging.

Hell is not other people. No. Not even those people. We need to puncture our bubbles and dance with people who are not like us at all. This is how we grow. The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

Sursum Corda (Meditation 7)

Here is this year’s Christmas-card-cum-Jahresblatt. I had to think long and hard about it. What on earth can you do for a card at a time like this?

I remembered a postcard that HAP Grieshaber made at the end of 1947 and sent to his friends. I bid on one earlier this year, but didn’t get it. Anyway, “Sursum Corda” was the message he’d written on the reverse, “Lift up your hearts.” 

He had returned home to southern Germany after being a prisoner of war and then a forced labourer in the Belgian coal mines, just in time for the severe winter of 1946-7. It was one of those winters where huge numbers of animals died in the fields because the farmers couldn’t get to them with fodder.

“Sursum Corda” he wrote the next winter. It’s the message to send in dark times.

So here we are. A tiny light in the darkness. Lift up your hearts. There can and will be light. You just have to make it.

Inktober: Part 3

 

This is the final eleven.

21. Sleep. This owes a little to an Erich Heckel print I’ve got in my mind. But I used the girl action figure as model. Did a drawing. Decided to crop it and focus in closer. Then closer again. There is pencil under this one.

22. Chef. I worked in a kitchen once. Washing up. The chef was an enormously fat man who sat on a wheeled stool and scooted himself from stove to stove. Slight homage to him, here. Did a rough sketch elsewhere and then did this one straight to ink.

23. Rip. Almost a meditation. Maybe it will be. I never use a shredder. Once you know how the grain in the paper goes, you can tear it into quite thin strips. I did 2 drawings of my hands trying to do this. A right handed drawing of my left and a left handed drawing of the right. Then I selotaped them together. I used that as the basis for the under-pencilling here. Quite a roundabout process.

24. Dig. Y’dig? Whatever it is, this cat’s diggin’ it. Some groove goin’ down. Yeah. Did it all, man. Did it all.

25. Buddy. Our great-nephew has a plush dog he calls, “Buddy”. So that got me thinking a child’s special relationship with a doll. I’ve seen a number of “Kind mit Puppe” (they’re nearly always German) prints and paintings recently and been reflecting on how these pictures are a version of Madonna and Child. So this. Did a very rough sketch and similar pencil under the ink. I was tempted to leave it at the grey stage. Maybe I should have.

26. Hide. A kind of Self-Portrait as Claudius here. There were all kinds of things that could have been the subject for this one. Even thought of a cow hide on the ground. But the great tradition of not hiding very well won out. So the great Ur-hider himself. Did some sketches of me messing with a towel in the mirror, then straight to ink.

27. Music. Can’t really separate the music from the musician, I think. These are based on Bob Downes’ hands. He has long fingers. I did a quick scribble while watching a video of Bob playing. It was a bass flute, so I shortened it somewhat to get the hands in. But that’s what art does, doesn’t it?

28. Float. Lots of things this could have been. So a touch of gone fishing. Felt like that this morning. Put a sign up on my door. Just went for this one, no pencil.

29. Shoes. Now we’ve been here before. Went for the obvious here. Just took out a pair of my wife’s shoes and drew them. Some pencilling under the ink.

30. Ominous. The rain is coming and there’s no escaping it. Sometimes you get a glimpse of how big clouds are. Wanted to convey something of that. Not sure how successfully. Straight to ink with the picture in my head.

31. Crawl. Used the female action figure with a dusting of Egon Schiele I think. Did a number of preliminary drawings. Crawling is not something I’d tried to convey before. Maybe she’s looking for a contact lens. There is pencil under, as you might expect. 

I really quite enjoyed this month. A good excuse to do some drawing before breakfast. Maybe I'll do it again next year.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Risk versus Reward

 

The final Rugby Open 2020 print. This is the second version of this one. In fact I went back to my original idea. The image had became more and more close-up. But it was just too… chaste, as my wife said. Also it seemed to have gotten a bit manga-ish to me.

Anyway. My original idea was Rodin so returned to that. I’ve taken some liberties with the design of Rodin’s sculpture. I didn’t want the great stone block his lovers are perched on. But by taking that away, I needed to make the pair more stable, mainly by altering how the man is sitting. Also it’s now a bit more comfortable for his (ahem) erection. And I’ve put his hand between her legs because, well he would, wouldn’t he?

This final one is all lino cut. I always bear in mind when I’m cutting lino that some of the gouge marks will show in the white areas. So I always try to cut in a direction that makes sense, so I can decide whether to keep them in the final print or not. When I began clearing the background, I started singing the Bruce Springsteen song, “Fire,” or rather the Pointer Sisters version. So I’m trying for a slightly flameish vignette here that nods to the wood grain in the other two.

With all our distancing and social policing, it’s easy to forget that in the end we will need to get close. Even to people we haven’t yet met. One day we will discard the masks and be human once more. Human in our best, most animal ways.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Minuet

 

The second print for Rugby Open 2020. This one is obviously about social distance, and having to make that calculation. But unlike my pre-Covid print “Purgatory”, with its uncomfortable alienation, my protagonists here are aiming to close the gap. My wife suggested the footprint stickers you see in shops to make you queue at proper distances. And that put me in mind of the illustrations in ballroom dancing books.

I had called it Minuet even before it had really formed in my mind. I wanted some form of distant dancing, and the minuet with its arms-length figures seemed just right for our time. As the idea developed, it became a much more sexy dance, more tango-like, as they seek to close the social distance.

This one is a mix of wood and lino. I really liked the individual elements, but struggled with the composition. This is version 3 or 4, with different colours, distances between the protagonists, background shapes. But at last I’ve arrived at something with the right dynamic. I like the movement it gives them, especially her.

Anyway, the story continues.

Love in an Age of Pestilence: Barrier Methods

This is the first of three prints I’ve entered for Rugby Open 2020. The deadline was yesterday, so I’m posting them each here separately over the next couple of days.

The challenge has been how to talk about the world today without, on the one hand, being sentimental and mawkish, or on the other, browbeating the viewer. Or both. I hope I’m getting there with these prints.

I’ve done three images on the theme of “Love in an Age of Pestilence.” There is of course the danger that if the judges don’t like the idea, all three are out. But I really wanted to give these a go. I feel that two things will get us through this mess. Love and humour. So this is me shining my tiny light into the void. We shall see. We shall see.

This one is subtitled, “Barrier Methods.” It’s a kind of fugue on my Meditations prints, but bigger. I didn’t look at the Sistine Chapel fresco, because I wanted it to reflect my faulty memory. And my hands. Well, both are my left hand, wearing rubber gloves from under the sink. I knew it was God’s right hand and Adam’s left, but I wanted a degree of equality between the two. So two right hands. This is not God and Adam here. It’s Everywoman and Everyman.

I plumped for woodcut here to give the swirling effect of the world of bugs we live in. And I wanted the fight of cutting the hands. Symbolic of the act of reaching out. The wood is from an old packing case that was dumped on the drive. Giving these things a second life brings me joy.