Upcoming Course

I will be doing another course at Sussex Printmaking Studios, which will run on Sundays in June, from the 2nd to the 23rd. Discovering Relief  will consist of four full-day sessions, 10am to 4pm.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to the rich world of relief printing, exploring the potential of this process in expressing your own creative ideas. We will approach this fascinating tradition from a contemporary perspective, looking at many artists working in this medium today. Learn how to use different materials to make your own plates, working with lino and different types of wood, as well as unorthodox materials such as card, plastic or metal. You will also be introduced to carving techniques and other plate-making methods.

For booking contact Sussex Printmaking Studios: sussexprintmakers@btinternet.com, 07765 892864.

Contemporary Woodcut Workshops

I delivered a woodcut course earlier this year, at Sussex Printmaking Studio, spread over 5 weeks between January and March 2011. We looked at the basics of woodblock printing and then explored the use of colour and grain. I would like to thank Geoffrey Plant, Pernille Harari, Belinda Chavasse and Michael Kalkbrenner for attending these workshops, it was great working with them. I will be doing another course in the summer, Discovering Relief, where we will look at all the possibilities within relief printing, experimenting with materials and plate-making. The dates for this course need to be confirmed, and I will post them as soon as they are.

Contemporary Woodcut Workshops was divided into three phases:

BASICS
During the first few sessions I introduced them into the technique, how to transfer the image on to the block, how to use the different carving tools, and how to approach image-making in relief printing. I showed them examples of artists using single block printing in black, and they worked on small blocks of soft wood, printing with black ink onto paper. Then we introduced colour by using coloured paper, applying watercolour, acryllic, computer printed images, and colour paper.

Some modern and contemporary artists we looked at for reference were (in order) Emma Stibbon, M. C. Escher, Uriel Marin and Paul Gauguin:

Printing exclusively with black ink is limiting, but can produce great results, and can make it easier to tackle relief printing for the first time, and to think about graphic language, mark making and the relationship between black and white in different areas of the print. These are examples of the work they produced:

 Belinda Chavasse

 Geoffrey Plant

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 

COLOUR

We experimented with using colour whilst still printing with one plate only, employing different methods to put the ink onto the surface of the plate. We looked at different artist's use of colour, such as Mabel Hewit's white-line technique, or Uriel Marin's blending of different colours on the same roller:

 

 

  

 

Here are some examples of the prints done at the workshop using colour on a single plate:

 

 

 Belinda Chavasse

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Geoffrey Plant

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Pernille Harari

 



Pernille Harari

 

 

 

GRAIN

Finally we discovered how to incorporate the grain of the woodblock into the image, looking at different types of wood and examples from artists for inspiration. Brian Nash Gill makes amazing prints from the cross section of trees, Edvard Much printed a lovely Kiss with a grainy block and  Merlyn Chesterman is a British contemporary printmaker who often employs the grain of the wood in her practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Towards the end of the course, the students worked on bigger blocks, choosing the type of wood they wanted to use according to its grain, and incorporating what they had learned throughout the course.

 

 





 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

 Michael Kalkbrenner

 

Belinda Chavasse

 

 

 

Transubstantiation: Performance on Paper

 

My second performance at Camberwell College of Arts, was at the Printmaking Workshop, and was titled Transubstantiation: Performance on Paper, performed on Thursday 14th April 2011. My intention was to draw a link between the printmaking process, tools, clothes and actions, with surgery; drawing a parallel between the paper and my body. The following photographs where taken with my old film camera, in collaboration with Ramon Eding, a great artist and friend, with whom it was so nice to work with (Thank you so much for these amazing pictures). I re-enacted and staged the performance again to take these.

In this performance I represent different figures, I was woman, printmaker, surgeon, mother and priest. There is one more figure, which I call The Cutter, is she who cuts herself, and lies between the woman, witch and body-artist. A defying and transgressive character that is all body, embodies everything red, accesses the forbidden insides, breaks the skin, sheds blood, is the menstruation, pain, birth, sacrifice and both destruction and creation.

The following print is the final result of the actions performed on the paper. The embossed host plate, the red baptism, the kiss, the cuts, the wound plates, the uterus and baby plates.

The Birth of Christ

This is my first linocut, a small image of the Virgin Mary giving birth to Christ. I made it over the Christmas and used it as a Christmas card, after all this event is precisely what the celebration is all about, despite the lack of this kind of representations. The dove and the eye represent God and the holly spirit, which converge in the uterus, 'making' Jesus.

It is an edition of a 100, image size 10 x 15cm, printed with dark red and gold.

I like... Carole Hensher's anatomy work!

 

I really like these works on textiles by Carole Hensher, the one above is titled Anatomy Lesson and is lithography on fabric. I thought I'd seen it somewhere else before, and then I remembered, she was in last year's BITE exhibition (below). Applying printmaking to other surfaces opens up alot of possibilities, and when it comes to anatomical imagery, printing it onto fabric which covers the skin, reflecting on what lies under, makes us more aware of the fact that we could peel off and have a look within. Reminds me of 'ecorches', self-peeling anatomical models that pose and show their insides in renaissance illustrations.

Tom Hammick

This photographs are from Tom Hammick's work in the studio where I am now working as a printmaking assistant. Thumbprint is a printmaking studio that produces fine art editions for artists in a wide range of techniques. My work there has focused mainly on relief and I have been involved in printing for Gary Hume, Lisa Ruyter, Andrea Buttner, Tom Hammick and other artists.

Reduction woodcut, Tom Hammick.