Monday 23 October 2017



MA Fine Art       September 2017 

Module: Technical Methods, Materials and Workshop Practices

My journey in Art continues as I begin studying for my MA in Fine Art which I will complete over the next two years.


October 2017: 
Monday 16th October:  Visited Coventry Biennial, a festival which works with artists from the city and also leading international practitioners to produce high quality exhibitions and events.
The main exhibition was housed in the historic Coventry Evening Telegraph building.
As I am a big fan of Picasso's work, especially his prints, I could easily have spent the whole day at the Herbert Gallery which was showing a large selection of his linocuts. 
One particular piece of work at the CET building that intrigued me was Gregory Herbert's Installation (Real useful boxes, pump, water and plumbing supplies). Although not a big fan of installation art, I felt I was drawn towards this work with it's very recognizable materials and the sound of the flowing water which seemed to create a sense of calm and constancy in the room where it was placed.
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October 2017: 20:20 Print Exchange
Images for new woodcuts to be presented for print exchange:
Five Monster Heads is inspired by an ancient Irish legend about a king who is insane and one of his nightmares is about being pursued by five detached monster heads.


Drawing for Five Monster Heads
Woodblock for Five Monster Heads











Drawing for Windblown Hawthorn



Woodblock for Windblown Hawthorn  2017











I used the two woodcut blocks to make prints in various colours and decided that a mixture of brown and black inks worked well:
Print of Five Monster Heads

Print of Windblown Hawthorn
I decided to use the top image (five monster heads) and made 25 prints which I presented for the 20 by 20 Print Exchange.




November 2017:           Beginning my experiments with wood engraving.


 I purchased a full set of wood engraving  tools and piece of highly polished boxwood (150mm x 158) and started making preparatory drawings for a wood engraving.



In my collection of found objects I had a short length of a branch from a cherry tree. Cherry is a very hard wood an is one of the materials that was used extensively in the past by Chinese artists for wood engraving. I cut a few pieces off this  branch and prepared the surface using different grades of  sandpaper to get a smooth flat finish.

The diameter of these pieces is rather small, only about 4cm, but nevertheless useful for experimenting with my new tools and making studies for a larger engraving.





As seen here: Some samples of the pieces of cherry wood I have engraved to date:


From the cherry wood engravings I made the following prints:
The first five are printed using white ink on black paper.













The following five images are printed in black ink on Gampi paper:
















I have found that most writers on the subject of wood engraving treat this process as being quite distinctly different to woodcut. My experiments with engraving on these pieces of cherry wood made me aware of the differences in technique and materials between the two mediums. As woodcuts are made generally using a soft wood and the cutting is made using gouges the detail in some images can be difficult to define and therefore shows the limitations of this medium. As wood engraving is made on the end grain of a piece of hardwood, although generally on a much smaller scale than a woodcut, the degree of detail in any image can be shown to a much greater extent.





5th November 2017  (Research Item)
Reading Wood Engraving written by Bernard Sleigh. Published in 1932 by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons Limited, London.

Sleigh comes from the old school of engravers and admits that even in the early years of the twentieth century his views might be considered "old fashioned." Nevertheless, what is very evident in his writing is his great passion for wood engraving and the book describes his forty years long career as an engraver and illustrates in great detail the techniques of this art.



December 2nd 2017:  London Gallery Visit

At Tate Modern I was intrigued by Ilya Kabakov's image Soccer Player 1964 . This to me said "landscape in the figure" as opposed to "figure in the landscape" and resonated with a series of paintings I did a few years ago that were inspired by looking at the landscape through the gaps in a dry stone wall.


Apart from the main exhibitions which were the Rachel Whiteread's work and the French Impressionists at Tate Britain and the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov at Tate Modern the work that I found most interesting was:
Polly Apfelbaum's  Dubuffet's Feet My Hands, at the Frith Street Gallery.
In  this exhibition Apfelbaum's artwork incorporates hand-woven carpets and beautifully coloured ceramics. Her inspiration for the floor installation was taken from a drawing she saw in the Museum of Modern Art in New York by artist Jean Dubuffet, titled Footprints in the Sand.  Apfelbaum translated the image into a series of hand-woven rugs each one depicting an enormous footprint which could only have been made by a man about ten foot tall. 
For the My Hands part of the installation, which consists of a number beautifully crafted ceramic hands, Apfelbaums took her inspiration from "the floating hand of God" seen in the mosaics of a basilica in Rome.
 This installation of Apferbaum's appeals to me for two reasons: Firstly, Footprints in the Sand reminds me of a story from my childhood that describes an experience in which a person is walking on a beach with God. They leave two sets of footprints in the sand behind them. The tracks represent different stages of the person's life. At various points, the two trails dwindle to one, especially at the lowest and most hopeless moments of the person's life. When questioned about this, God's explanation was: "During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you." 
Secondly: In my first year at art college I made a study of hands for a piece of art and I was intrigued then by the idea of the hand being a symbol of creation as in Michelangelo's  Creation of Adam. 

Research for the Technical Report Essay

The focus of my research for the Technical Methods, Materials, Workshop Practices Module has been in wood as a material, and in particular its use in woodcut and wood engraving for the purposes of printmaking.
I have looked at (a), the history of the woodcut. (b), expounded my reasons for using woodcut in my own practice. (c), looked at the work of contemporary practitioners who use woodcut and who have influenced my work. (d), described my experiences with the material  and process and the limitations that the material itself imposes.(e), from my research and experience explained why I see woodcut as continuing to be important as a medium in art practice today. 

History of the Woodcut

"The history of Wood Engraving epitomizes the history of our culture." So says Prof. Alan W. Woodruff in his book A History of Wood Engraving.
Despite the extensive surveys carried out  by art historians on the subject it is difficult to determine when the first woodcut might have been made. Records however indicate that "by the sixth century AD woodblock printing had reached an advanced stage in Europe." (Chamberlain W. Woodcut Printmaking.) The use of the medium continued to develop in the centuries that followed and was used mainly as a means of illustrating books and manuscripts.By the fifteenth century books began to appear that were made entirely using the woodblock.The first printing presses made made from wood and continued to be used until the nineteenth century. 
In the middle of the seventeenth century a new school of art developed in Japan. This was known as Ukiyo-e (paintings of the floating world), and became the first major development in the art of colour printmaking, and a process that continues to inspire many artists today.
During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the use of the woodcut continued to develop as a medium in art and was practiced by leading artists such as Paul Gaugin (1848-1903), Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), Edvard Munch (1863-1944), and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Context: Why I want to use the woodcut;

Landscape has always been a feature in my artwork and as Sasha Grishin describes it (Australian Printmaking in the 1990s)  "The Woodcut best expresses the power and energy of the landscape and figures in the landscape." 
The theme of my art practice takes its inspiration from an ancient legend set in the seventh century and therefore wood, a natural material that has been used for thousands of years, is highly appropriate to a subject that has a humourous side but also an underlying dark side. 



Contemporary artists and the Woodcut: 

Paul Furneaux is an Edinburgh based Scottish Artist/Printmaker who has spent several years in Japan studying the traditional woodblock printmaking methods. What I find really exciting about his work is that, while he has continued to use many of the traditional ways of printing, like using the baren in place of a press, he has developed developed a completely new individual style of his own and in recent years his practice has shifted from 2-d to 3-d. In his 3-d work he makes wall-hung structures in wood that he wraps his prints around.      




Alex Katz is an American Artist who, like Furneaux, was heavily influenced by the Japanese techniques of woodcut printmaking. in the late 1950s Katz developed a technique of painting on wood panels that wood occupy spaces like sculptures, calling them "cutouts".
From 1965 onwards he made over 400 print additions and many of these are from woodcuts.
What appeals to me most in his work is his economy of line and flatness of colour.





Philip Sutton is an English Painter/Printmaker and Royal Academician whose unique method of printmaking I have found very inspirational.Sutton is famed for making coloured prints from woodcuts in a way that he developed himself.He would cut up the woodcut into separate pieces, corresponding to the main colour areas of the image, then apply the ink to each, reassemble the jigsaw and print.











Conclusion

In her essay Printmaking in the 21st Century, Gill Saunders argues: "Just as the invention of lithography did not render woodcut and wood engraving redundant and photography did not spell the end for traditional graphic media, so digital technologies have not replaced other methods but rather extended choice and capacity." Saunders argument is borne out by the evidence we see in the work of a great number of painters and printmakers today, many of whom still use the humble woodcut and many more a combination of traditional and digital processes. this has confirmed for me that woodcut printmaking still has an important role to play as a medium in art practice.


December 2017

The second challenge (self imposed) of this semester was to make and exhibit a piece of art for the MA Exhibition at the Coventry Evening Telegraph building: 

The ancient Irish legend from the seventh century that inspires my work relates to the tensions and conflict between the new Christian faith and the old pagan beliefs and way of life. In his introduction to Sweeney AstraySeamus Heaney suggests that "it is possible to read the work as an aspect of the quarrel between free creative imagination and the constraints of religious, political and domestic obligation." All over the world today we witness the conflict that is caused by the creation of boundaries and the effect of the tensions between different religions and my concern with this has become an underlying theme in my work.


The following is an extract from the the first chapter of the story/poem Sweeney Astray, Seamus Heaney's translation from the Irish of a  legend from AD 637 originally titled Buile Suibhne

There was a certain Ronan Finn in Ireland, a holy and distinguished cleric. He was ascetic and pious, an active missionary, a real Christian soldier. He was a worthy servant of God, one who punished his body for the good of his soul, a shield against vice and the devil's attacks, a gentle, genial, busy man. 
One time when Sweeney was king of Dal-Arie, Ronan was there marking out a church called Killaney. Sweeney was in a place where he heard the clink of Ronan's bell as he was marking out the site, so he asked his people what the sound was. "It is Ronan, son of Bearach," they said. "He is marking out a church in your territory and what you hear is the ringing of his bell."
Sweeney was suddenly angered and rushed away to hunt the cleric from the church. Eorann, his wife, a daughter of Conn of Ciannacht, tried to hold him back and snatched at the fringe of his crimson cloak, but the silver cloak-fastener broke at the shoulder and sprang across the room. She got the cloak all right but Sweeney had bolted, stark naked , and soon landed with Ronan. 
He found the cleric glorifying the King of heaven and earth, in full voice in front of his psalter, a beautiful illuminated book. Sweeney grabbed the book and flung it into the cold depths of a lake nearby, where it sank without trace. Then he took hold of Ronan and was dragging him out through the church when he heard a cry of alarm. The call came from a servant of Congal Claon's who had come with orders from Congal to summon Sweeney to battle at Moira. He gave a full report of the business and Sweeney went off directly with the servant, leaving the cleric distressed with the loss of his psalter and smarting from such contempt and abuse.
A day and a night passed and an otter rose out of the lake with the psalter and brought it to Ronan, completely unharmed...........


Inspired by this legend I decided I would  make a piece of artwork that would attempt to give visual expression to this violent but intriguing scene. If I completed it in time I would then exhibit this work at the forthcoming MA art show in the Coventry Evening Telegraph building.



Having decided that wood as a medium would lend itself well to subject of my work, I cut a piece of birch plywood to 71 cm x 94 cm. I started by making a list of the main images I thought should be part of the composition, and these needed to include  a holy man, a naked man, an otter, and a book of psalms, with a stunning landscape in the background. 



The next part of the process was to transfer the drawing to the woodblock and  I did this by using yellow transfer paper, having first coated the plywood in Indian ink.







Next step: carving 







Using Fabriano paper (100cm x 71cm) and a mixture dark green and black oil-based inks I successfully made 5 prints from this block.



Using another piece of birch plywood of exactly the same size as the above but only 6mm thick,  I transferred the drawing as before. Using a very narrow gouge I carved the outline of each part of the image, then using the fret saw in the wood workshop, and with the assistance of the technician , I cut the image into sections as in a jigsaw.
Back in the print room , I mixed a variety of coloured inks and using a separate roller for each piece of the jigsaw, I lifted out one section at a time and applied the chosen colour. I made one print only from this selection of colours, then mixed another set of coloured inks and made a second print.  










I presented a print from the carved woodblock and the two jigsaw woodcut coloured prints for the  Upstairs Downstairs exhibition in the Coventry Evening Telegraph building as shown below. 





In the exhibition I also I also included this woodcut print which is titled       Windblown Hawthorn















The four prints as shown in the Exhibition at the CET














And here are a some of the photographs I took of the exhibition:

Rose Jardine   Weltschmerz

Wendy Bicknell   Morning Myth Maker

Shannon Warren

Nikolina Raphael  The Forgotten City

Janet Manifold  "Oh still small voice of calm"

Stephanie Libreros  Joy in Death

Tanya de Lange  In Search of the March Hare

Alexendra Walker  Knit-Unknit

Clive Roberts  Figures in the Landscape

Richard Scott  Selections from Bleed Series



Tuesday 12th December 2017

Reading research: The Stamp of Influence: Abstract Expressionist Prints by David Acton


In the introduction to his book Acton claims that Abstract Expressionism had an "extensive and lasting influence on printmaking. The full range of it's styles and ideas appear in prints, many created by the progenitors of the movement."
Of particular interest to me in this book were some of the artists featured who worked in the medium of woodcut printmaking, including this Belgian artist  Joseph Meert (1905-1989). In the image below, titled "Dancing Demons", Meert used a Japanese paper, described as a long-grained mulberry-bark paper.
The vertical grain of the woodblock, the pale green tone and the sweeping black lines combine to create an illusion of transparency and motion. The denser areas of black, orange and yellow would probably have been created by using three or maybe four different blocks, a method used by many artists in making a coloured print.


January 2018

Submissions of work for the Technical Methods, Materials, Workshop Practices Module

Sunday 7th January : Completed and uploaded to Moodle my 1500 word Report/Essay and my Critical Evaluation form.    

Monday 8th January:  I did a Power Point presentation for ten minutes with images that included my woodcut prints for the 20:20 Print Exchange, my engravings in cherry wood, my prints for the Coventry Evening Telegraph exhibition and a woodcut I am working on called "Burren Man." I included some images from the work of three artists who inspire me and who also work in the medium of woodcut. These are Paul Fernaux, Alex Katz and Philip Sutton. I also showed my audience my actual cherry wood engraving blocks and my jigsaw woodblock.
The work that was presented by the other 13 MA students in my group was highly diverse and I found it very interesting and inspirational. 





Summer   2016       Notable dates


31st May 2016: 
 End of second year at Warwickshire College. Preparing my studio space and setting up work  for assessment.

9th June 2016:
Althorpe Street Gallery. working as a volunteer helping two artists:  Diana Oancea and Chiara Grant to set up their work in the gallery.

11th June 2016:
Fern Gallery, Balsall Common. Helping Alfreda to install Runcible.

18th June 2016:
Went to B.C.U. in Margaret Street to see the B.A. end of year show.

20th June 2016:
End of year show at Warwickshire College of Art.

22nd and 23rd July 2016: 
Stayed in Oxford two nights for wedding of Tomi and Jess.

26th July 2016:
Afternoon ferry to Ireland to our cottage to stay for 5 weeks.

1st September 2016:
Travelled back from Ireland

13th September 2016:
Went to the Curzon Building in Birmingham to enrol on the B. A. 

22nd September 2016:
Attended Level 6 Briefing Meeting at the School of Art, Margaret Street, Birmingham.

23rd September 2016:
Althorpe Street Gallery:  Helped artist John Hunt to hang his paintings in the gallery.




BA Show June 2017


Title of my work :                          
The Plight of Sweeney

The Plight of Sweeney is inspired by an ancient Irish legend, c.637AD, a story/poem written in Gaelic as Buile Suibhne or The Madness of Sweeney. My work is based on Irish poet Seamus Heaney's translation entitled Sweeney Astray (1983). 

The tale began when Sweeney, a pagan Ulster King, seriously offended a Christian cleric called Ronan; he put a curse on Sweeney that made him insane and transformed him and transformed him into a mythic half-man, half-bird, doomed to die at spear-point. After seven years roaming Ireland, a servant woman at a farm took pity on Sweeney and every morning gave him milk to drink from a hollow made with her heel in a cowpat. Jealous of her friendship with Sweeney, her husband killed him with a spear,

The Plight of Sweeney comprises three woodcut prints on Fabriano paper, (each 60 x 82cm), a floor mounted stone sculpture, and numerous wall mounted figures hand-cut  from birch plywood.Each woodcut prints represents a highly charged emotional scene: 1) Insane, Sweeney imagines he is pursued by five detached bearded monster heads; 2) going back to visit his wife, he finds her bed is "still warm from her lover" who has just left; 3) his death at spear-point. The cowpat is hand carved in found Irish limestone I picked up in the landscape; birch is a species native to Ireland. For me the choice of these natural indigenous materials combined with the centuries old techniques of hand carving complement and give deeper meaning to my theme. 

The legend of Sweeney in my work recounts his immense physical and mental suffering, set against the great beauty of the Irish landscape that he describes with such fervour. The Plight of Sweeney highlights the violent historical conflicts between the new Christian teaching and the older pagan beliefs and dying way of life; so my work can also be seen as a metaphor for changing modern ideas of national geography and identity in Ireland.

"The heads were pursuing him, 
lolling and baying,
snapping and yelping,
whining and squealing."
"Restless as wingbeats 
of memory, I hover
above you, and your bed
still warm from your lover."
"He shall roam Ireland, mad and bare.
He shall find death on the point of a spear"

Cowpat: Carving in Irish Limestone

My work for the end of year BA show at BCU Birmingham