Intaglio

Understanding the limits of a plate and press have taken awhile and I still under/overestimate the amount of ink to leave on. However, mount-board is a forgiving material and with a new blade on the scalpel fine work can be achieved. My visual influences have been the prints of Paula Rego (Nursery Rhymes), and Paul Nash (Uncanny Landscapes); paintings of Brian Graham (Towards Music); illustrations of Tove Jansson (The Hunting of the Snark); exhibitions of Norman Ackroyd etchings (The Furthest Lands) and Sinclair Ashman collagraphs (Landscapes: real and imagined). Designs have been stimulated by reading ‘Europe’s Lost World: the Rediscovery of Doggerland’, by Vince Gaffney et al, visiting the Norfolk coast of The Wash and Seahenge at King’s Lynn Museum. I’ve been reading about the Inner and Outer Silver Pit, imagining the underlying topography of the North Sea off the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Norfolk coast. My plates represent salt deposits, hills and valleys formed by ice sheets which scoured and ground the terrestrial land.

Collagraph

I love experimenting with recycled wallpaper, sandpaper, various cereal boxes, Tetra packs, natural materials (leaves and seaweed), thinking about the organic nature of what I’m depicting – intertidal zones where marsh and freshwater channels merge, and prehistoric forests and peat levels become exposed when rough seas erode the sandy cover. Fragments of pottery from the Lincoln Eastern Bypass excavations show abstract patterns carved into damp clay walls and rims. Self-adhesive aluminium foil over woven or textured materials on card offers both raised and impressed or carved patterns to be incised, replicating these shards. One particularly successful plate combined trapped rolled oats, seeds and pips from my breakfast cereal under aluminium foil as the pinched decoration of a collared urn based on an illustration from West Ashby.

Screen

Since my intaglio and collagraph prints have been in the main, apart from the occasional china colle, monochromatic, refreshing my skills with silk screen has given me the opportunity to produce multi-colour prints. I have also been lucky enough to use The Print Block studio for professional technical support and equipment. I began in March 2019 with hand cut stencils using transparent film. The quality of my geology prints is dependent on the quality of photographs taken on site, breaking the rocks unique characteristics down to individual colours and getting as near perfect registration. The first rock was a test of dexterity and persistence as there were several ‘islands’ of hand-cut stencil that needed placing in exactly the right place. The second, third and fourth rock prints all used the photographic process of exposing screens to hand drawn positives. I translate photographs into artwork for exposure on multiple screens (six colours being the norm) and decide the colour combinations as I work.

I enjoy the intellectual aspect of my printmaking. Over the last two years I’ve realised how important knowledge is for my progression. For example, reading about Professor Colin Waters thoughts about the Anthropocene, and human influences on geological features in the 20th century, sometimes called the ‘Great Acceleration’ made me contemplate what evidence will be left in 100 years. I’ve watched, listened to and read Must Farm excavation podcasts and papers, learning about textile production and the types of woven fabrics preserved in the wet conditions of the paleo-channel. This has led me to greater appreciate the sophistication of Bronze Age life in the fens. Ward and Kolomyts (2019) writing about cognition and creativity rang true in ‘the quality of creative outcomes will be influenced by the content of a person’s knowledge and the manner in which elements of that knowledge are accessed and combined’. It is important for me to have the rigour of academic articles on archaeology and geology to maintain momentum.