Happy New Year!
I'm in contact with a specialist Platinum printmaking studio, that has created works for Sebastian Salgado and Don McCullin amongst other hugely notable artists. I’m hoping they may agree to work with me on a Print Club piece, we’ll see. If so, that will be amazing, to my mind! There’s a softened beauty in the platinum process, which captures layers of greys in monochrome, that the more normal silver halide process can’t really match. As I’m keen to explore and expand my own knowledge of the process, it seems like a great opportunity to work on something a little out of the ordinary, that may also teach me something about an aesthetic that I love, but have never worked on, to date.
Amplifier, EPC #16
Amplifier /EPC is edition #16 for my Experimental Print Club. The piece revisits an archived drawing that has been loitering in my imagination for quite a few years, but hadn’t quite managed to surface until now. The original studies take on the idea of a modulating series of concave and convex forms, which are in themselves rippled with a further waveform, rendered in glazed and tinted colours, that appear almost like scales on a fish. I’m not sure why I didn’t resolve the drawing originally, but it may simply be that I put it down for a while, and never came back to it. That tends to happens quite a lot, and has led to a significant archive of incomplete works.
Amplifier / EPC #16 in progress
There’s a beautiful crisp autumn light permeating the studio this morning, so much so that I have to keep the shutters partially shut just to be able to see my screen. So it seems like the perfect time to start work on an autumn edition for the Print Club. I’m going to work up a new variant of my Amplifier artwork, which has been in the back of my mind for a year or two now, but hasn’t quite managed to surface. That is set to change! I’m planning on making a two part print, one metallic, the other matt, and composite those two components onto a holding sheet. I hope it’ll make for a good edition, we’ll see. I’ll write more about the ideas behind it in my next post, which should also have some images of work in progress. All being well, the edition should be in the post within a fortnight. That’s my current plan anyway!
Summer Editions #13 and #14 in the post
Just a quick note to let you know that Editions #13 and #14 are in the post today. I hope you'll receive them in good condition asap! The Paean piece is taped, in tissue paper, to a holding board, as the cutout points are a little vulnerable, so please do unwrap it with care!! I'll look forward to being in touch again soon, as the Summer progresses…
Edition #13, colour proof finalised...
As we head into the summer proper, I thought you'd like to see a photo of my recently completed initial colour proof of edition #13, which should be in the post to you shortly. It's a 90cm square textile version of my interStella drawing, printed by Citrus Rain in Manchester. I have to say I think they've done a pretty good job, although it does perhaps need an iron! It makes for a very different thing from my more usual works on paper. I hope you like it when you receive it…
Paean / One day in May / Print Club ed #14 in progress
I wanted to make a piece for the Print Club that would speak about the lockdown, but also of joy, the beauty of nature, and the inspiration that manifests, whilst also continuing with the idea of the moment in time, and the specificity of a place, that I hope has been one of the major threads of the print club project to date
Critique and action / Plastic pastoral / Tao
These two latest prints are entitled Tao. One is earth, one is sand. Back in the eighties when my main concern would’ve simply been about how to create and sustain a creative studio practice, I was hugely influenced and impressed by the work of April Greiman. I’m not sure if her works have stood the test of time, but in many ways that is not the point, I love the idea that a work in some way defines or represents the moment that it is made in.
Print Club, edition 13 in progress
I’m working on some initial colour proofs for my first Experimental Print Club edition of 2020. If you’d like to know more about my Print Club. It’s an ongoing experiment in contemporary print, and an opportunity to collect exclusive limited edition works from the studio, posted out directly to club members, alongside invitations to events, and studio news. All powered by Patreon.
Pride 2020
Starting the week with a post to highlight my recent work in support of the the LGBT Foundation. The Pride print is available as an open edition for 12 months only, ending on 31st October 2020. You can read more about the work on Blackwater’s website
interStella / QUAD
intersStella is a new series of sixteen drawings, arranged into four quads, with four works in each quad. These new works on paper comprise Venn like geometries based on circadian rhythms, bought to life with a series of sixteen colour variants, which I hope speak to the idea of the four seasons, plant life, and perhaps tulips in particular. They clearly also riff on the work of Frank Stella, a true hero of colour abstraction
Hive #1 / EPC / duality : singularity
I’ve been working on a new series of drawings called Hive. It’s currently unclear exactly how these studies are going to ultimately manifest themselves, but I suspect it’ll be as a series of large format panels, possibly in sequence. For the moment however, I thought I’d print a single, smaller component of the series as a new piece for my Experimental Print Club. I’ve been thinking about the nature and problem of working in a rapidly climate changing world, and how best to integrate that thinking with my daily studio practice, both as a series of reflections, which is a large part of what the studio is about I think, and as physical works that can create some kind of response to the concepts we’re being asked to consider, and act on.
Experimental Print Club #11
I’ve just dispatched edition #11 for the print club. It’s titled interStella / EPC / home. The piece combines a variant from my new interStella series with photography from the garden, specifically the soil under my sweet peas. I like the idea of experimenting with ideas around combining drawing and photography, and of course the subject matter alludes to ideas including the sense of place, the idea of growth, and the earth, or soil, as root, and begins to unpack some new ideas about permaculture, and how that may sit with my practice in the future.
interStella 2019
I’ve been working on a new series of 16 drawings, entitled interStella. It’s kind of a mash up of a number of geometries I’ve been studying, but most obviously an exploration, and complication, of the maths underlying the early works of American legend Frank Stella. I first saw his beautiful, epic, artworks at MOCA in LA in 1991, and was completely blown away. So it’s been on my mind for a long time to try and unpack some of his thinking, and riff on that beautiful style that came out of NYC in the late sixties. I hope I’ve bought a little fresh thinking and technique to bear too.
Happy New Year!
I was visiting Ripe Digital recently, a superb short run commercial digital printer based locally in Corsham, where Bath School of Art have some of their studio space, and Howard Hodgkin used to teach. Rik at Ripe Digital introduced me to their new digital foiling machine. In essence, this is a short run, or one off, opportunity to apply metallic foils to my print work. A process that previously demanded bespoke metal dies and long print runs to be even vaguely affordable. It's an idea /process that I hope will continue on from where the recent Klint / cut piece left off.
So I'm experimenting with the idea of making a pair of foil based works for the club, in which several, perhaps four, coloured foils will be used to create two new works, probably with some inked areas too. Maybe ish 12 inches square each. Not sure yet, but will keep you posted as the work progresses.
Klint / CUT, Experimental Print Club Edition #9
Spent a good day yesterday working on the 9th edition for my Experimental Print Club. I’ve been making 3 or 4 smaller ephemeral works on paper each year for the club, as a kind of loosening up idea, with the intention of trying out new ideas that may feedback into my main practice, whilst simultaneously creating some hopefully quite collectable smaller works that go out to club members in the post. It’s a nice concept that coerces me to make some new smaller works each year.
EPC edition 9, Klint / cut
I’m just on the brink of making Edition 9 for the print club. The autumn edition for 2018. Having told you that I'm planning to make a piece on silk, and a ‘mantle piece’ in my last post (I’m still intent on making both of these) I’ve been somewhat waylaid by an interesting colour proof print experiment, which I think will make a good new edition to colour up the autumn. Time will tell. In essence it’s a kind of collage from some proofs of my Klint prints, mixed with some foil fragments, collaged onto a sheet of Somerset paper, by way of a backing sheet, with debossing. That's the plan anyway, I'll send some progress images shortly…
Stellify / TWO / cerise glaze commission, May 2018
Great to have an opportunity to revisit my 2017 Stellify / TWO drawing this spring. Commissioned with a silver / lilac cutout central core, as opposed to the original yellow / gold component.
Dazzle / 12 bar
I spent the weekend making a new 10 colour pigment print for the opening night of my new show 'Current' at Catto Gallery. And now that it's packed in cellophane and looking rather fab, I realised that I could tuck a few prints to one side for my Print Club members. So I'll look forward to posting one out to you in a week or two's time. I hope it'll brighten up your home as autumn settles in…
Gallery opening, Swindon, Friday June 2nd
With just 2 weeks to go, I thought I'd send over a final post for today, to invite you to the opening of a small solo show at Swindon's latest gallery - Oink. Curated by Mark Pepperall, it's a delight to be included on the roster, and for this 6 week show, I'll be exhibiting about 15 pieces, including an 8ft edition of Eight Ball mounted to Perspex, which I hope will be quite something.
Experimental Print Club Edition 5 proofed
For Edition 5, being posted back to back with Edition 4, I've made a new print of one of the best 'Systematic Variations' that I've been working on over the past couple of months. For this Print Club edition, the work has been printed 'cut to colour' on Kodak metallic stock, and then 'tipped in' to a debossed sheet of handmade Somerset 100% cotton paper. I like the locality of the stock, and I think there's a certain interest in the idea of 'tipping in'. A little like the way colour plates used to be added to books before mass market colour printing really arrived. There's a lively contrast between the crisp clarity of the cut edge and the altogether more haptic debossed edge too…