What am I working on ?
I have print underway of a little riverside scene I observed at Upnor on the Medway in Kent (UK).
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| Lino marked with pencil, carved and ready for printing (after a quick clean up) |
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| #drawingaugust day 19 notebook pen sketch of dinghies stored at Upnor |
I am planning two different colourways - traditional nautical blues and the other in perhaps orange and reds. There are two separate blocks, one for the colours and the others for grey tones which will cut into twice to bring out the detail of the timber work. I love these types of weathered marine structures and they have featured in some my previous prints including Blue House at Shellness and Morston Quay.
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| Blue House at Shellness - two plate (one reduced) lino print |
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| Morston Quay - Two plate lino print |
How does my work differ from others of its genre ?
Erm, what a tricky question! For me my work is different because it is the work I made. I know and have been in the landscapes I depict. I know or have made up the stories I tell. And I know very intimately the piece of lino that I have chipped and flicked and carved away and the ink I have rolled and blended and pressed. So of course my work feels very different to me than anybody else's, don't we all feel that way?
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| Little bird houses mounted on timber piles at the edge of the sea in Cowichan Bay, Vancouver Island |
Why do I write/create what I do ?
I love the physicality of printing, the carving, the rolling out the ink and the winding of the press. The processes involved are diverse enough to keep my interest. And above all I get a little thrill from seeing twenty or so multiples of a design laid out in front of me at the end of a long evening with ink and press.
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| Thornborough Henges |
How does my creative process work ?
For me printmaking is about capturing a glancing encounter or
a moment in a landscape through sketching and design, tracing and carving,
blending colours and inking and finally pressing. My approach is organic and flexible. I rarely
begin with a fixed idea of the outcome and I often edit and re-work right
through to the end.
I take photos, mostly bad ones, constantly when I am out walking, cycling or exploring. Sometimes a particular scene or setting will grab my attention there and then. Others times its only when I have mulled over the photos and perhaps done a little background research that an idea begins to formulate. Some prints come to fruition in weeks, others have taken months or years!
AND now I have the pleasure of passing the baton on to my nominees Cinzia Bacilieri and Murgatroyd Hoots.
Murgatroyd Hoots is a blog I have followed for a few years and I am always cheered to see Kathleen's quirky textile creations popping up in my reading list. This blog is such a wonderful melange of story-telling and colour strung together with thread and wrapped in a coat of the most beautiful vintage fabrics. A lovely world to dip into when the real one feels a bit bleugh!
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| Vulpini (c) Murgatroyd Hoots |
Cinzia Bacilieri is rare amongst the bloggers I follow in that I know her in real life too. We worked together quite a few years ago on a project to map the archaeological remains of coastal Yorkshire from air photographs. Besides being a air photo interpreter, archaeologist, lecturer in her native Italian and History of Art she is also a painter. Oh, and she speaks Korean too. Pop over to her blog to see just how her journey into the Korean language and culture has come together with her art work.
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| Aura painting (c) Cinzia Bacilieri |
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| (c) Midori Takaki |
