Miniature Mayhem

The studio may be shut this month but it is a good time to review my recent work and plan for the next few months ahead.   During the year there are many drawing and print competition to try for and hope that work will be selected.  I currently have a lino cut in a travelling exhibition in the Midlands through the Leicester Print Workshop’s Smallprint competition. 

Sometimes it can feel a bit like a lottery but if choosing selectively it can also provide targets to focus on.  It is important to select exhibitions and competitions that allow you to still keep a primary focus on your own practise rather than just trying new ideas to fit someone else’s criteria.

I have recently been making work for the Printmaker’s Council Miniprint competition.  This is providing me with considerably opportunity to hone my techniques in screen printing which I have only been learning over the last few months.  They require prints that are no larger than 8cm x 10cm.  At this size registration becomes very important as there is very little margin for error.

It does have the advantage though that the screens can be small and printing is quicker, so I have been able to try out a number of ideas in a short period of time.  All print techniques have their own demands and preparation and practise are the keys to success.  So often all we see are the final finished prints that make everything look to effortless.  Oh so far from the truth, hiding the hours just working away trying to get anything to come out as you want.  

So in a spirit of honesty I thought I would show some of the many failures that have been occurring while trying to make these prints.  They are improving and with a little more work I think I will have my entries ready by mid September – watch this space.

Colours bleeding out under the screen while printing

Registration nightmare

A very uneven print on the background, flat areas can be hard to get even

What happens when you forget which way round your image is.

Lockwood Print Group

Last night I went to the opening of the Lockwood Print Group's exhibition Fur, Feathers, Fingers and Fins at the Lewis Elton Gallery at the University of Surrey, Guildford.  The Group all attend Lockwood and meet one day a week with Julie and Annee in the studio.  They have been working very hard over the last few months and with the help of Lindsey and Tina as well have produced some lovely and  humourous works of all sorts of animals, fishes, birds as well as their own hands.

The Mayor of Guildford came to open the exhibition and was particuarly taken by one screenprint, entittled 'Teddy made me do it '.  For me I think I most enjoyed the nodding reindeer heads on the back wall, each individually coloured.

The exhibition is on for the next couple of weeks, I recommend a visit if you can, the joy of the artists making the work will leave you with a smile on your face.

Information on Fur, Feathers, Fingers and Fins

Room 90

Have you discovered Room 90 in the British Museum? If not now is a good time to go while they hold the exhibition Out of Australia.   Room 90 is the Gallery where the Museum display Prints and Drawings from their own collections and they usually have at least two differently themed exhibitions each year.  This current exhibition covers works from 1940s to the current day from both indigenous and European descended artists.

From a personal point of view it is the work of the indigenous artists that is the most interesting.  As you enter the gallery there is a large aquatint called Untitled (Leaves) by Gloria Tamerre Pertyarre.  It has a glorious rhythm and movement to it as individual small brushstrokes represent leaves on the wind.  It is this striking handling of pattern within such works that has always fascinated me; there is a dynamism and fluidity that bring them alive.

A colour aquatint entitled ‘Fire Dreaming at Yanjirlpiri’ by Paddy Japapaliarri Sims strong orange and red elements that shine with an intensity that is not often seen in such a print and well worth a closer look.

The exhibition also shows some of the transition that European descended Australian artists followed from the 40s, when you have to remember that access to other styles of western Art was very limited.  Travelling to Europe would take four to six weeks by boat and so many Australian artists would spend a number of years abroad to explore and learn about the leading forms of Contemporary art.  Some would spend most of their careers, based in Europe and in particular London.  It was perhaps not until the 70s that Australian artists did not feel the same need to spend so long abroad to be part of the wider art world.

An artists whose works I had previously seen in Room 90 was Fred Williams, he spent 5 years in London during the Fifties.  When he returned home he saw the Australian landscape anew and it changed the direction of his work from realistic figurative pieces to more abstracted landscapes making a strong use of marks, which still look remarkably fresh.

Two other personal favourites were drawings by Brent Harris from 1999.  They are studies for large paintings.  Silhouetted forms are fluid and dripping and play with negative and positive space.

So remember Room 90, there are always fascinating works to be found.

New Drawings

I have had a couple of weeks away from the studio visiting Dorset.  A time that allows me to draw and while away I completed a couple of larger drawings in the new style that I have been experimenting with recently.  Instead of using just single thickness lines I have been working with variable thicknesses.  Before going away I had made a small drawing and transferred to a screen and experimented with some different colour ways.

The two larger drawings are the first I have done at this size (paper 56 x 76 cm) which allows more scope for experimentation with the form.  I’m still not quite sure where they are going and will need to do a few more drawings yet.  This is part of my process, from each drawing I learn something new and start to incorporate that knowledge into the next drawing and so on.   For my degree show last year I did over 20 drawings to reach the final five that went on show, from each one I learnt something new. So with this type I still have a long way to go.   

In the meantime I have also been trying some miniature versions that I am just starting to print, hopefully to have some work to submit to the British Mini Print competition in September. If anyone has thoughts on them, please make a comment

Open Studio

Well the Surrey Artist Open Studios event is on and Ochre are taking part for the fourth year running.  Following on from Ron Pokrasso’s  workshop it has been a busy time.  We had the open studio private view on Saturday, having hung the final few pieces of the exhibition on Friday night.  Saturday was a lively affair with some bands playing and refreshments available and the studio open for people to try their hands at producing a monotype.

We are open again this weekend (11-5pm) so come down and see a wide variety of high quality work by over 30 members of the studio on display.

Ron Pokrasso – Workshop and Talk

The last few days in the studio have been particularly busy as we have had a visiting artist running a workshop and giving a public talk.  Ron Pokrasso, comes from Santa Fe in New Mexico, USA where he runs his own print studio, running workshops, assisting other artists and producing his own work. http://www.ronpokrasso.com/

 

I was not doing the workshop myself but acting as technician (aka tea and coffee maker) in the background, but it allowed me to observe all the work going on in the studio and to see Ron’s demonstrations.

The workshop ‘Beyond Monotype’ explored the way monotype could be used as an explorative process, through repeatedly re-working on plates, exploiting the ghost images left behind from an earlier print.  Making use of collage elements and overprinting to further develop prints in progress.  Ron’s approach offered great freedom to play and try out different ideas in a way perhaps unfamiliar to many printmakers.  For some of the participants this was perhaps an initially frightening way of working but they all soon found their own ways of opening up and going for it.

During his visit Ron spoke of the three ‘C’s as being part of his philosophy of working and teaching, Craftsmanship, Content and Composition.  Of the three composition within a work was most important, without good composition the rest would not hold up the work.  Content should be from within, the passions that are part of you, for Ron it was clearly music, family, art and baseball.

In his talk he showed many paintings and assemblages from the last 20 years where the works had been built up on panels and started to incorporate more musical elements until they actually had guitar strings, piano strings and even parts of old pianos, such as legs and sounding boards.  These were large sale works of about 5 to 6 feet long, but they retained much of the same feel as the smaller works on paper that he makes with the monotype process.

Ron was an inspirational teacher and I know that all the participants got a great deal from the workshop and were sorry when it ended.  He provided many tools and ideas to help people enhance their own working practice rather than trying to convert them to his method.  A sign of a fine educator and practitioner and it will be interesting to see how they all absorb these ideas in future work.

Ron about to give a demo

A couple of Ron's demo prints

Everyone hard at work

The wonderful array of colours

A tired but happy crew at the end of the workshop

Colour Fun

Recent holidays and a family bereavement have reduced my time in the studio over the last month, but I did manage to complete a set of experimental small prints that I have been working on for a little while.  The idea was to quickly work on a lot of small prints with some basic shapes and forms to see how different colours would interact when printed over each other.

Not having played much with colour over the last couple of years, it was good just to have a free hand to explore how different colours would work together.  In this case I have used mainly pure colour with just a couple of mixed ones.  The results can now be seen on the studio wall.

As the screenprinting process gives relatively thin coatings of ink as layers build up, the resulting colours increase in depth and hue as they are printed over. The order of printing will also alter the resulting colour.  

When I want to investigate something then I find making small works like these (they are about 20cm²) the best way, they don’t become too precious and the final result is not so important rather what is learnt on the way.  My next task is another set with a different range of colours based from what I have learned here to try and refine a palette for more finished pieces.