Proofing Edition #17
Hope this finds you well. I've been enjoying myself working up the artwork for the latest Club edition, #17, attached here. The working title is Vox linea / EPC #17 / platinum edition. I've had the idea for this monochrome drawing in the back of my mind for a couple of years now, it's one of those things that I was ultra confident would work out well, when once I actually got around to sitting down and working it all out. In many ways, I'm happier with it than I had expected to be, which is good! The piece is about the space contained within the picture plane, and the way the forms bisect, interlock, and speak to each other.
Vox linea, platinum EPC, edition #17, pt 1
Hope this finds you well. Spring is definitely in the air here, tons of new growth on the climbing rose on the back of the house, and tulip tips pushing up out of the pots. The promise of colour and excitement to come in just a couple of months time. I have to say I love this time of year, the days are getting longer, and everything seems freighted with possibility. I've been talking to, and negotiating with, Max Caffell at 31 Studio, The Platinum Printroom, and he has very graciously agreed to make an edition for us. Which I think is a really exciting prospect.
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…
Artist in Focus / In conversation with Jamie Aherne, Blackwater Gallery
Combining technology and art, Chuck Elliott has a passion for creating beautifully manipulated digital artworks. Utilising a computer’s ability to meticulously alter light, colour, and form. Elliott’s work has a core in abstract fine art but has evolved alongside advancements in the digital design field, to produce something that transcends expectations of what can be produced by traditional methods.
We catch up with Chuck and discuss his latest creative developments as well as take a look into the life of one of the UK’s most recognisable digital artists.
In conversation with Jamie Aherne, Blackwater Gallery
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
Print Club Ed #13, an interStella headscarf, progress report...
I thought I'd send over a progress report! Ed #13, which will be a 90cm SQ headscarf, digitally printed by Citrus Rain in Manchester, is my first foray into the world of short run digital textile printing. I'm quite excited by the prospect. Back in my Soho studio days, I worked for Prada, Yohji Yamamoto and Nike, to name just 3 of the fashion and textile brands I made images for, but these were promo images, not the raw fabric designs.
Notes from a locked down studio
Where to start!? It seems like a long time ago that we were locked down in response to the Coronavirus, and I have to say that at the beginning of the process I rather assumed that it would be the end of the studio as I’ve known it over the past 25 years. The strong sense of an impending recession, coming hot on the heels of austerity and Brexit, seemed to me to sound a death knell for artists working with high street galleries as their primary source of income. Inevitably I retreated to my garden to think, and to labour. The simple task of tending the garden in Spring is a fantastic tonic, and of course, allows one to think and reflect at some length.
Bath Life magazine, March 2020
I’m posting some images of an article in this month’s Bath Life magazine, just published. Lovely to be featured on the cover, and delighted that the editorial team also chose to feature an image of the latest Print Club edition. Nice to see it in print, if that isn’t too meta
Modular Locus / In conversation with Freeny Yianni
FY Tell us a bit about your approach to your work. How would you describe it? What are you looking for in a subject? How has your style developed, and what matters to you?
CE Sometime back in 1984 I saw, and used, the first Apple Mac computer to be imported to the UK. It was an important moment and one that resonates to this day. In that moment I decided I wanted to use digital systems tools to draw my work, as opposed to the more traditional media I was being trained to use. In some senses, you could characterise this as the difference between rock music and electronica. Rock music remains super relevant of course, esp the post-rock movement, but there seems to be space in the discourse for a more contemporary means of production too.
The digital offers a host of revolutionary options, many of which revolve around the idea of the edit, and the remix. Effectively you can draw, colour and model, and then refine, edit and remix, to arrive at images that simply weren’t possible to create before the digital revolution.
In conversation with Freeny Yianni at the Brewhouse Gallery, March 2020.
Modular Locus
A solo show of digital drawings at the Brewhouse Arts Centre in Taunton, curated by Freeny Yianni and Close Ltd.
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.
Modular Locus / Brewhouse Gallery
A solo show of digital drawings at the Brewhouse Arts Centre in Taunton, curated by Freeny Yianni and Close Ltd.
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
10 Artworks From Artnet’s Gallery Network
interStella / Quad by Chuck Elliott. Inspired by the work of Frank Stella, this geometric pattern print riffs on ideas of the changing seasons and plant life through bold and bright colours. The colour saturated work is sure to enliven a winter day. Sara Carson
12 / in production at Ripe Digital
12 in production at Ripe Digital. Rik was kind enough to film the book in production for my blog, fascinating to see a modern digital press working. It’s a long way from the letter press and optical type setting we studied at college…