This is a reduction linocut print I produced a few weeks back to test my new printing press. The process is also referred to as a ‘suicide print’ since additional linocut material is removed after printing each new colour, so it’s virtually impossible to recover from any mistakes.
This image was inspired by a new book called ‘Picasso Linocuts’ by Markus Müller (ISBN: 9783777439815) and by Picasso’s famous Bull series in which he worked to banish unnecessary detail from the image in order to distill the purest representation of the animal.
In the print above I was trying to sum up my impressions of the pure physicality of the cow and, especially, how such a huge bulk can be supported on such dainty legs.
As with most printmaking, ensuring the paper is registered in the same position when printing the different colours is essential, and you can see mine is very slightly off. I’ll try and post sequential photos or a video of the whole process the next time I attempt it.
South Stack Lighthouse Abstract (Acrylic on Canvas)
This is an attempt to try the Colour Field painting style of Mark Rothko and others. It’s actually a simplified landscape painting of South Stack Lighthouse, which is probably a contravention of the ‘subject/form free’ approach of the Abstract Expressionists. Incidentally, it’s also the first painting my wife has liked enough to put up in our house. That means I must be getting better, right?
Diana and Actaeon (Acrylic on paper on board 92cm x 53cm)
This is my first attempt at a Mythology painting which contains a hidden pun! Can you spot it? Read on for a clue!
The painting is based on the classical tale of Diana and Actaeon, in which the great hunter, Actaeon, stumbles across Diana (who is, ironically, goddess of the hunt,) whilst she is bathing. In her ire, she transforms Actaeon into a stag, after which he is pursued and torn to pieces by his own hounds after they fail to recognise him.
The painting was developed from a sketch produced during an Island Art Group workshop conducted by the artist Iwan Lewis. During the workshop, Iwan presented us with an eclectic collection of objects (see image below) for inspiration, having asked us to read the passage on the Death of Actaeon from Ovid’s narrative poem Metamorphoses prior to the workshop.
Iwan Lewis IAG Workshop
I found this approach truly inspirational and, on being informed that, as well as being goddess of the hunt, Diana was also goddess of the moon, I was prompted to bring together such disparate influences as William Blake’s print of Nebuchadnezzar, Pablo Picasso’s linocuts of bull fights (in which the abstracted skeletons of the bull, horse and rider are clearly apparent), the change scene from the film American Werewolf in London, as well as Titian’s wonderfulmasterpieces.
At Iwan’s prompting, I also began to pay extra attention to the interesting negative space between forms, rather than just modelling the forms themselves. I tried to focus on creating a collage/assemblage of interlocking blocks of flat colour that can be viewed as separate entities in their own right, but which then ‘metamorphose’ into a coherent image.
I also tried to select suitable complementary colours which would create conflicting effects of the warm background ‘pushing forward’ against the cooler main figure trying to ‘recede’ in order to deliberately set up contradictions between the figure and the ground as per aspects we’ve been learning about in the MoMA course on Abstract Expression.
All in all, this was an absolutely fascinating project and I’d love to paint a large scale mural in this style!
For anyone that’s read this far and wants a hint to help find the pun, then you need to consider what does a mighty hunter or the goddess of the hunt need that’s in both of Titian’sversions but not in mine?
Did you get it? Please give me a ‘share’ or a ‘like’… (Luckily, I don’t think Facebook has got a ‘groan’ button yet!)
Counting the steps at South Stack Lighthouse (Acrylic on canvas 100cm x 80cm)
This was painted as a submission to the Ucheldre Centre‘s Art for All competition 2013. The colours are intentionally brighter and the rather idealised/dreamlike composition (which is actually a ‘collage’ of the key elements experienced when walking up and down the steps), hopefully gives more of a sense of the vertigo-inducing view. Also submitted were A Bigger Station and South Stack Lighthouse.
This painting of Holyhead Station was completed in response to further reading of David Hockney’s various musings, specifically in Hockney on Art: Conversations with Paul Joyce, and A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney by Martin Gayford, on the need to resist the ‘tyranny of the lens’ in painting. Shamefully, I missed Hockney’s 2012 exhibition at the Royal Academy, entitled A Bigger Picture (despite being in London at the time to view Lucien Freud’s Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery), as the queues were phenomenal!
The painting attempts to apply what I understand of Hockney’s views on the need to incorporate changing viewpoints in order to suggest the passage of time and movement (as per his quoted examples of Diego Rivera’s murals and Chinese scroll paintings), and thereby strive to break the ‘stranglehold’ of the monocular rules of perspective.
Hockney’s photographic ‘joiner‘, Pearblossom Highway, in which one gets such a strong sense of looking in different directions, especially of looking ‘down’ on the flattened cans on the side of the road. (Also see interesting video here.)
It was painted with short, loose, brushstrokes in an effort to replicate Van Gogh’s style, which always remind me of iron filings in a magnetic field and always seem to suggest movement and vibration, the intention being that the brushwork reflected the passage of many thousands of feet over the platform surface, as well as the movement of light and air rebounding off the glistening surface of the roof canopy. In the end, the only static objects in the painting are the people; even the gentleman walking towards the exit seems transfixed.
It was painted from sketches carried out on site as well as with a rudimentary first attempt at making a ‘joiner’. The objects at the bottom of the picture are my feet, which I’d originally thought of including in reference to the tin cans in Pearblossom Highway…
A Bigger Station Joiner (photographs on coloured paper 100cm x 70cm)
The following two paintings were completed in fairly quick succession, again in a grisaille style. The first was painted from a very loose sketch carried out in a very fine drizzle, which soaked my sketchbook and obscured my view. The ‘fingers’ of rock reminded me of a giant’s hand as he was attempting to claw his way onto dry land and made me think back to tales of Irish giants read about as a child.
This is a portrait of my daughter, painted in a looser style from a black and white photograph of her, perhaps explaining the slightly surreal colours.
This early attempt at a coloured oil painting was inspired by a documentary on Russian art by Andrew Graham-Dixon, in which he discussed Constructivism and made reference to Alexandr Rodchenko’s declaration regarding the ‘death of painting’. The title is intended to be ironic in suggesting that there is ‘still life’ in painting, whereas it is the chemical photography which motivated Rodchenko’s sweeping statement that is in its death throes. I think the motif has merit but I just got a bit carried away with the burnt umber. One to revisit.
I’ve painted a few self-portraits over the past couple of years, despite the fact that my family always mock me for portraying myself with a double-chin. I think the most commonly used phrase is ‘Dad, you look like a frog…’ but to my way of thinking, I’m just trying to earn myself the right to ‘paint what I see’.
This first picture won second prize in the Holyhead ‘Art for All’ exhibition held at the Ucheldre Centre in 2009(?)
Self-Portrait (Oil on Canvas 50cm x 60cm)
This second drawing hasn’t photographed well, due to being behind glass, so it appears overexposed.
Distance (Charcoal on Paper 41cm x 30cm)
This third sketch was accepted into the Kyffin Williams Drawing competition exhibition held in Oriel Ynys Môn in Llangefni. It was drawn with a mirror propped on my lap so as to produce a slightly disorientating view and was done in a mad rush on the last day that they were accepting entries, due to the fact that I got the dates mixed up!
Self-portrait 3 (Pencil on coloured paper 59cm x 42cm)
