Rock singularity / EPC edition #25 / WIP
I’ve been busy completing the latest Experimental Print Club edition over the last few days and weeks. It’s all come together rather nicely I think, definitely in my own top 5 so far.
Print Club News / May 10th 2023
Thought I’d post a teaser image of the 3d rock scans I’m working with at the moment. I found this rock in my garden, a rather lovely one, part of a path edge, and thought I could use it as a plinth for my glass work, but in fact the images from the scanning process have their own potential too.
Spinnaker EPC / foiled and Matrix / ONE
I’ve completed a pair of new works for my Experimental Print Club, edition numbers 23 and 24. I’ve been experimenting with foil blocking techniques for these editions, with the help and advice of Rik at Ripe Digital in Corsham.
Spike Print Studio / Intaglio etching with Martyn Grimmer
I’ve been enjoying expanding and improving my working knowledge of intaglio printmaking techniques under the brilliant tutelage of Martyn Grimmer at Spike Print Studio here in Bristol.
The studio offers open access to some fabulous printmaking presses, all set within what must be a Festival of Britain era daylight studio with curtain wall glazing looking out over the new cut.
Print Club News / Winter Solstice, December 2022
So we’ve reached the Winter Solstice, the beginning of the holiday period, and a beautiful moment for reflection and celebration. If like me you’re a gardener, you’ll know that today marks the point in the year when the light levels start to increase again, albeit slowly at first. As a point of interest, I found out recently that the rate of increase is sinusoidal, so maths and nature intertwined perfectly as ever.
Print Club News / December 2022
I hope this finds you well in the run up to the Winter solstice, Christmas and the New Year. I have to say I was hoping to be a little further on with the latest Print Club editions by now, but in fact, it has been pretty busy here, with a lot going on in the past couple of months, and the foil work I'm experimenting with hasn't been totally straightforward. It's an interesting challenge though.
Studio News / September 2022
I've just completed a new Chime / cerulean crop edition for a collector in Canada. Courtesy of Avida Mohseni and the fabulous Avi Gallery in Ontario. I’ve spent a little while rebalancing the colours, and working on the colour profiles, so it has a little more vitality than before, quite a lot more in fact! Loving the new Fotospeed metallic lustre paper I’m experimenting with too, it seems really radiant in use.
Print Club News / August 2022
I've finally completed a new set of photos to document my Stellify 4 print club editions. They've been a little while in the works. I thought I'd post a few of the images here.
Sennen / EPC edition #22 dispatched
I just wanted to wrap up the week with a little Print Club news. I've completed the summer edition, #22, which is titled Sennen / EPC. I've also ordered some new packing tubes for the piece, which I believe will be here on Monday, so I'm very much hoping to have the work in the post to Print Club members on Monday or Tuesday, all being well.
Sennen / proofing the edition
I’ve been working on this new drawing on and off for a couple of months now, and feel it merits some kind of outing, so I’m going to proof it, think about sizes, and make it into a piece for the Print Club. I think it’ll work best on a flat matt paper, so I’m going to try it on the Hahnemühle 305gsm 100% cotton rag, at least to start with.
I started drawing this piece in response to my XGen CV series, sometime back in the Spring. Like XGen, it takes on the idea of creating an underlying grid structure and then building some kind of framework around it, that pushes the geometry in some unexpected and hopefully quite lyrical ways.
XGen / EPC edition #21 dispatched
I'm just scribbling a quick note to say that edition #21 of my Print Club will be in the post today. I hope it'll brighten up your spring, with a blast of colour. That's certainly my intention for this piece!
I'll look forward to writing a longer email about the work, and the studio asap, but for today I just wanted to let you know that I'm packing and addressing the parcels this morning, so you can look out for the print in the mail.
Work in progress / EPC edition #22
Seems like a little while since I last updated you on my studio work here, so I thought I’d stop and take a moment to get in touch. I have to say that the winter months have been quite challenging with all the awful news about the war in Ukraine. I think the combination of Covid, Brexit and the looming cost of living crisis have also created some real headwinds for the art world, or at least the part that I inhabit.
There’s an interesting issue surrounding the confidence required to keep at something each day, as studio practice demands. Essentially you need to feel that the challenge of spending time working on the drawings has some value in the big scheme of things, if only at a fairly ephemeral level…
XGen / TWO / initial colour studies
I’ve started work on a new series, the second of my XGen studies, that are exploring, and riffing on, the energy contained within a simple X form.
These latest drawings have taken on a few lessons from the Stellify 4 folded works that I made in December. In particular the idea of using colour blocks, or more specifically multiple coloured areas within a single study, as opposed to toning the whole image as a single more sculptural piece.
It’s an idea that gives a far more geometric feel to the final images, and maybe more punch?
Stellify 4 / EPC Edition #19 / dispatched
Pleased to say that I've dispatched the latest Print Club edition, #19, today. I've yet to complete and pack the 2nd piece, edition #20, as it needs a little more tweaking, but I thought I'd get this first one of the two out today so that it'll arrive before Christmas.
Stellify 4 / EPC edition #20 dispatched
I wanted to post an update on the double Xmas edition that I’ve been working on recently. It’s been a little delayed by some group shows running into Christmas, and as ever nothing is quite as simple as you might initially think it would be. But it’s all coming together beautifully now, so I’m hoping to have work in the post early next week, all being well.
I completed the 112cm wide Stellify 4 prints last week and took them for cold lamination, a process that will give the final pieces a beautiful flat, matt finish, which should keep them looking good in situ for quite a while.
Stellify 4 / EPC Edition #20 / in progress
I’ve been somewhat waylaid in recent weeks, with five invitations to exhibit works in group shows around the UK in the run up to Christmas. It’s great to be included, so no complaints of course, but it has meant that I’ve been running around to the framers, laser cutters, and so on, prepping the works to exhibit, instead of getting on with the latest projects!
That said, I have now carved out some time to refocus on the latest Print Club editions, and have spent some very enjoyable days moving the drawings from my system onto paper.
Stellify 4 / deconstructed / WIP
I've been working on a new set of drawings for the past six weeks or so, and to date, I have maybe six works to show, derived from my original Stellify model, based around the fourteenth stellation of an icosahedron, with a dodecahedron at its core.
It was originally built from sixty components to form a complex modular origami model. But for this study, I've exploded the form and reimagined it as some kind of quasi architectural landscape.
Stellify 4 / EPC Edition #19 / WIP
I've been working on a new set of sculptural drawings, which I think are going to generate something of value, hoping so anyway. It’s a series of works that encompass a more angular feel, with crisp folds and coloured panels, that are redolent of origami, and folded paper structures. I've been progressing this strand over the past 4 weeks or so, and feel as though there's something of interest here.
XGen / maquette / EPC #18 / a new Print Club edition
XGen is about the potential energy created in a pair of crossed lines, an X, and I hope, explores that embedded or kinetic energy as it expands from the centre of the frame. As I worked on with the piece, it also seemed to me that there is, perhaps, some suggestion of the XY chromosome issues that are sparking a huge amount of fascinating debate in our society recently. I hope there’s a little poetry in the work too.
Vox Linea / platinum print / EPC #17
For a little while now, I’ve been interested in the idea of creating an edition that would somehow speak about the history of photography, and its ongoing relevance to the digital, so it seemed beautifully serendipitous when I stumbled across Max Caffell and 31 Studio, who inhabit some part of the intersection between those two things.
Max, and his father Paul before him, have been creating platinum prints from their studio in Stroud for some of the most interesting names in modern and contemporary photography, including David Bailey, Don McCullin, Simon Starling, and Sebastião Salgado, amongst many others. I don’t know when I first became aware of platinum printmaking, many years ago now I think, perhaps during a formative visit to the Fox Talbot Museum in Laycock in the eighties. It’s been a medium that has always interested me, largely for the softened beauty and delicate tonal range of the finished prints, as well as the extraordinarily glamourous history of the medium.