I’m slowly starting to add items to the shop. I’m doing this slowly to make sure I have everything set up correctly. I’m aiming to make it possible to browse by medium, price, subject and size. I’ve added the last because I know sometimes thought how a little corner of a room would benefit from just the right piece of art and I can’t be alone.
I’m also working on setting up Virtual Exhibitions from time to time. My next real time show is not until May 2021 and who knows what will happen between now and then? For the moment this will just be a custom selection on the Shop Page but I’ve seen some wonderful examples since lock down using Virtual Reality so I’m looking into that too.
The featured image is called The Moon Goddess and the Sun. It is a collage made several years ago with prepared papers over a colour wash on watercolour paper. I had it framed for myself, but it will soon be added to the shop. The frame is very heavy solid wood so it will probably be added to the shop minus the frame.
Since my last post, I’ve continued to work on monotypes. The count has now reached over 40 prints and I’m actively looking for a venue to show them, although framing costs would be a bit daunting! I’ve learned a lot from making them which I think will be useful in my other print work.
I’m going to add lower resolution versions to my Portfolio page but I’ve also added one to this post. Almost all of them are 30cm (12 in) on a side. I’m waiting for a new plate which will allow much larger prints, up to 20″ x 16″. It’s US made hence the measurements in inches – 76 x 41 cm approximately or just under A2.
Forbert – abstract monotype print
A set of my smaller prints, in the ‘Cross’ series, are going to be used locally in a Stations of the Cross installation. This wasn’t a sale as such. One of my neighbours is the Church Warden and although I’m in no way a religious person, I was happy to make the donation. The church is a significant part of the view from my windows. I would be willing to take on a similar commission, so if anyone out there is interested, please get in touch.
On the portfolio pages I’ve added some more larger gel prints to an album I have renamed as ‘Life In Lockdown’. At some point I aim to get these into mounts and bagged for sale. If in the meantime you are interested in any of them, please get in touch. They are available ‘as is’ with no mount or frame for £85.00 plus postage.
I’ve added another page to my Portfolio Pages here with examples of some Gel Prints. I’ve also been using the prints made this way as elements for collage. I’ve always liked collage, ever since I came across the work of Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters in my teens, too many years ago.
geometry 2017-I Collage
geometry 2017-II Collage
Here’s a couple of slightly larger collage pieces (about 12″ x 9″ or 300 x 225 mm)
Finally here’s another one from some time ago, using prepared papers again, but this time by monoprinting on paper smaller than the plate, so taking the colour to the edges. I originally intended this to be overprinted with a drypoint, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet…
I’ve been unable to do any printing for quite a while. I have been plagued with problems with my foot, putting me on crutches since mid-November. I used my down time looking at a lot of pictures, but also thinking about subjects and themes. I’ve been interested in neolithic rock art for some time now and living near Avebury and Stonehenge it’s impossible to avoid standing stones. Scattered also across the landscape of Wessex are hundreds, if not thousands of barrows and burial mounds and of course the White Horses like Pewsey, Cherhill, Westbury etc in Wiltshire or Uffington in Oxfordshire. In addition we have the famous Cerne Abbas Giant, the Long Man of Wilmington and assorted other hill figures, many now lost completely.
It isn’t just Britain with these features. The stone alignments of Carnac in Brittany are well known, but there are a multitude of standing stone circles, alignments and dolmens across France and Ireland and much further afield.
Putting all this together made me wonder about the sort of landscape we might see if more had survived. Out of that has evolved the print series I’m putting together. This will take landscapes, more or less stylised and incorporate into them other figures. I will draw on a range of sources. I’m researching Celtic and Saxon myths, cave paintings as well as the sort of abstract shapes found in rock art.
Technically, these prints will incorporate collagraph and dry point plus perhaps solar etching and ultimately hand embellishments. I also expect to use monoprinting or hand painting as the ground on which the prints will be made. I’m also going to try and incorporate some of the techniques used by Australian artist, Kim Westcott. (http://www.kimwestcott.com, although the site did not load properly for me.) She reuses old plates in combination with new, mixing in shadow prints and rotation of the plates to create her drypoints.
I have no prints as yet, but here are some rough sketches and photos of some plates in preparation.
With luck, I’ll have more over the next few weeks.
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I’m not the only one finding inspiration in these themes. See the web pages for Irish artist Tommy Barr.
I’ve been looking at the Ocean Park series of paintings and prints by Richard Diebenkorn (via this book.) There is something about them that keeps drawing me back. They are deceptively simple with subdued colours, apparently just variations on geometric subdivisions of a rectangle. This makes them seem akin to Mondrian, but for me, they have much more depth. They also owe much to Klee, and perhaps also to de Kooning, at least in terms of colour values. In the end, though, they are themselves and stand on their own merits.
When I was at school, studying maths, we were always told to ‘show your workings’. In many ways, that’s what is going on with the Ocean Park paintings. Variations, second thoughts have been painted over, but their ghosts remain.
I think this is part of their appeal to me. I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of palimpsest, even before I became an artist. Both the urban and rural landscapes of Britain can be viewed as archaeological palimpsests. Take the time to look around any British town or city, and you will find signs of previous activities. The street pattern in many Northern industrial towns can often be mapped against ancient field boundaries. Alignments going back into pre-history may still be seen.
Beneath the streets archaeological investigations and civil engineering projects alike reveal layer after layer of activity. (for example Crossrail). The same applies in the wider landscape. Anyone familiar with Britain, will read into these paintings the pattern of fields, woods and lakes which almost define the English landscape. That landscape is almost entirely man made, even in the supposed wild areas like Dartmoor or the Scottish Highlands. It is not ‘natural’ but has developed out of complex and cumulative processes of human intervention.
So just as imperfections and variations disturb the surface of the modern world, revealing its past to those who look, so the Ocean Park paintings reflect the process of their creation, revealing the changes made, and to my mind, humanising their geometrical abstraction.
I’ll come back to this another time with images from prints inspired to a degree by Klee and Diebenkorn. I’m also planning some new work which will attempt to marry the geometry of this work to another interest of mine, the rock carvings and standing stones of the Neolithic era. Here are a taster with a collagraph monoprint I called ‘Frome Westport to Ocean Park’.
I have already posted the ‘basic’ version of this, (here) which is available in an edition of five. This is a one-off experiment in printing over prepared paper, in this case washes of acrylic paint plus some acrylic ink. I suppose this makes it a monoprint – or perhaps it is mixed media?
As an experiment, it’s worth recording, but I don’t think the prepared paper really works in this instance.
