Kate Watkins

Kate Watkins, Clevedon Pier. Gocco print

Local artist and printmaker Kate Watkins gave a very inspiring talk to the artists' group this week. She spoke about her 'creative journey' to date focusing on her time at Winchester School of Art doing an MA in printmaking. It was here that she developed her interest in coastal themes, making a panorama of Calshot (read about in on her website here).

Kate Watkins, Flip Flop. Solvent transfer and pencil study print

Kate Watkins, Super Strong. Solvent transfer and graphite

Since then, Kate has continued to develop this theme in her work, using objects found on the beach to make solvent transfer prints over which she uses graphite. She has also created a seres of abstarct images based on coastal themes.

Kate Watkins, Weather Worn Circle. Monoprint and ink transfer

Kate Watkins, Weather Worn IX. Monoprint and ink transfer

I really like the fact that Kate mixes different techniques together (something I often do in my own work) to layer up imagery and create rich colour and texture. I was also very impressed by her drive and motivation to create her art, regardless of the various constraints we find ourselves under these days. Wish I could be as focused!

Pop-up Prometheus

Started fiddling about with pop-ups... Here's my first attempt; pop-up Prometheus with a twist. Literally.

Flying south

Finally got the box sets for the Falkland Island Printmakers all packed up and in the post this week. Hope they get there safely. I have no idea how long the journey takes. Having left the UK in a record heatwave, they will arrive in the depths of winter, possibly to snow. How weird is that. Anyway, I hope the recipients will enjoy them as much as we northerly printmakers have.

Open Studios

,,It’s that time of year again. Local artists are preparing to throw open the doors of their studios to welcome visitors to view their work. The one I’m taking part in isn’t until August but I thought I’d get my prep done early as things are pretty intense down in the data mines at the moment. Spent the last couple of days packing unframed prints and ordering frames so I’m all ready to go. Fingers crossed for a sale or two.

The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers at St Barbe Museum

Mychael Barratt ~ Lost Magic Kingdoms

There's a selection of prints from the RE Summer Show at Bankside on display at the St Barbe Museum in Lymington at the moment; much more convenient for me than trekking up to London.

I haven't been to the show or a number of years so as well as some of the old favourites (like Mychael Barratt - the print shown here kept us busy for some time trying to work out which books the little images relate to), there was quite a lot of work by artists I'd not seen before. 

Delores de Sade's work caught my eye - I've not come across her before. Her etchings had an air of 19thC book illustrations... there was something Holmesian about the look of them and with titles such as not without undue prolixity and hence arises a digression, my penchant for narrative was thoroughly satisfied. 

Having said I'd not come across her, I've just looked at her website and realised I have seen some of her work before. More investigation of this interesting artists needed I think.

Working away on the text this weekend. It’s intricate and slow-going but with a bit of John Dowland on the old ipod, I’ve been able to get into that zen-like state where there’s nothing but the line you’re making - it takes as long as it takes. Hoping to get the majority of the text finished today so I can etch next week. My plan is then to aquatint over the text so that it sinks into the background. I have a mental image of how it will look but part of the magic of printmaking is that quite often, things turn out differently to how you imagine.

April Exhibitions Part 1 - Red Hot Impressions

Private views were a bit like buses at the beginning of April; none for months then two in five days. Red Hot Impressions which runs from 5 April to 18 June 2011, is the first collaboration between Red Hot Press Printmaking Workshop and The Art House, Southampton’s not-for-profit café gallery and arts venue. It’s a great venue right in the city centre so we were very excited to be asked to show there.

The Art House has a lively programme of events including art, music and poetry, and workshops in just about anything you can think of, from English folk fiddle to drumming, and sign language to beadwork. They even run a workshop on how to run a workshop! The venue also provides a meeting place for a number of groups which include writers, knitting, language café and a group which makes stuff out of scrap anything – very much in line with The Art House’s green ethics. The café serves vegan food prepared and cooked on site, grown organically and locally sourced where possible. And those who run the show, mostly volunteers, are great. What’s not to like about this place?

Red Hot Impressions includes original prints from sixteen members of Red Hot Press and covers a wide range of printmaking techniques; etching, linocut, woodcut, drypoint, letterpress, screen printing, collagraph, gum transfer, monprinting… I’ve probably forgotten some. A full and varied show! We had fun hanging the exhibition - a team of seven of us did it in just under three hours, and during that time, I think we put every print on just about every screw in the gallery! It all came together really well in the end though. Here’s the Art House’s blog with some pictures of us hanging the show.

The opening was well-attended; the wine flowed, thanks to the Art House crew, and work sold. All in all, a very pleasant evening. More pictures here. If you haven’t paid a visit to The Art House, jog on down and have a coffee and some of their superb home-made cake - surrounded by excellent works of art of course!

Printing for Etsy

The last couple of weeks have been enjoyably busy in a printmakerly way. I spent a large part of the bank holiday weekend holed up in the studio looking through packaged prints and printing older plates to ‘stock’ my Etsy shop. I rarely revisit old plates, even though I haven’t printed the whole edition, but it was quite fun relearning the plates… remembering where to wipe more for cleaner whites, where to let the ink sit for a richer tone, which to tonk before pulling the final print. No sales on Etsy yet but a couple of my prints have been included in treasuries (these are themed collections of items for sale which Etsy members put together and publish on the site; a little help with advertising has to be a good thing).

I also had a meeting with a web designer to discuss revamping my website – get me! That made me really think about my target audience and the message I want to give. I learnt some useful stuff about marketing and how the web works so I’m all fired up to get the overhaul underway.

Summer's almost over

It seems that summer is nearly over; there’s definitely something autumnal about the early mornings now. As we’re preparing for the start of a new academic year, and as I’ve had a seriously uncreative summer, this feels like a good time to review where I’m at with my printmaking projects.

Production has been slow over the last year or so, partly owing to learning new techniques and partly by experiencing a creative bottleneck (there’s also that little thing called life which tends to get in the way too). I’ve not taken up so many exhibiting opportunities this year so I’m feeling the need to focus on getting my work out there.

Two things which have been on my To Do list for some time are overhauling my website and setting up an Etsy shop. The first I’m going to need some help with but the second I’ve already made a start on. The shop is set up and I’ve listed a couple of prints already. Now comes the fun part of seeing what else I have in stock and what needs printing. Who knows if I’ll make any sales but I’ve nothing to lose in trying.

Originals 10

I paid my annual visit to the Mall Galleries on Saturday for
Originals 10, the top UK open exhibition for contemporary printmaking in which works by emerging talent hang along side those of established printmakers and members of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. Virtually every printmaking technique is covered from etching (check out Martin Ridgwell and Mychael Barratt), wood engraving (Hilary Paynter was on excellent form as usual), linocuts (Gail Brodholdt and Angie Lewin) and mezzotints (Martin Langford) to collagraphs, screenprints, digital and lasercut works.

In past years the show has felt a bit samey; same people showing the same kind of work, but this year, there seemed to be much more of a range of techniques and styles. In Venetian Diary III, Mila Furstova had wrapped her etchings of Venetian buildings in sheets of clear acetate covered in handwritten text, rolled into tubes. Jenny Smith’s Circles II and Circles IV are laser cut screen prints, combining a traditional printmaking technique with the relatively new technology of laser cutting. Carol Hensher specialises on printing on fabric; My fingers grasp at floating feathers comprises four white silk evening gloves with hands printed on them using lithographic methods. Fiona Hepburn cuts out hundreds of tiny woodcut and screen prints and fixes them in clusters using pins to create intricate fungal and bacterial forms.

My own tastes are more traditional; I find myself drawn to figurative works with something of a narrative in them. Personal favourites were Jessie Brennan’s Six Boys, Catherine Anne Hiley’s Untitled I (Dietrich) and Untitled III (Orhan), and Katherine Jones’s Magenta Strip. These are just a few; in a show like Originals, there are so many prints to look at it can be quite overwhelming.

Whilst there, we had the pleasant surprise of bumping into Katherine Anteney, one of the directors of Red Hot Press Printmaking Workshop here in Southampton. She made an interesting comment that the show was very ‘black and white’ this year; more monochrome prints than in previous years maybe. Presumably that was just the way the selection went but it would be interesting to know if the selectors were aware of this at the time. And speaking of Red Hot Press, our very own Wendy Couchman, one of the members, had a print included – congratulations Wendy!

All in all, it was a really interesting show this year, well worth a visit. Shall look forward to Originals 11.

Images:
Katherine Jones, Magenta Strip
Catherine Anne Hiley, Untitled III (Orhan)
Jessie Brennan, Six Boys

The Undertaker's Nuptials

Started putting some words down for my next series of prints. Having spent so long illustrating other people’s words, it was really satisfying to illustrate my own in creating the Red Scar series. That happened by accident really; the story (never finished) was written to amuse a friend and I hadn’t intended to use it as a starting point for a series of etchings… but that’s how it turned out. The image of the three characters in the coach was so vivid in my mind, I had to make a drawing of it.

I don’t like my drawings. As a rule, they’re fairly dead on the page until I turn them into a print. I suppose it’s the combination of textures and quality of line and tone which is impossible to create in any other medium other than printmaking.

This time, I’m going one step further; writing the story – The Undertaker’s Nuptials - specifically to generate images. We’ll see how it goes.

Cardcut workshop

How nice it is to be able to just get up and walk away from one’s work and not have to pack everything up. The luxury of a studio.

Think I’ve done as much on the cockle as I can for the moment – need to etch and proof before I can do any more so that will have to wait until I can get down to the workshop; not for another three weeks unfortunately. Need to buy my own press!

Will be teaching a cardcut workshop soon (subject to enrolments) so I need to do some prep for that. This will be a two-day course, Saturday and Sunday, which I’ve not done before. In the past, it’s been offered as consecutive Saturdays, giving plenty of time for students to finish plates and varnish to dry, so will see how this goes. Teaching is exhausting but I do enjoy it. It’s great to see what the students produce having learnt a new technique. And I’m always up for a bit of printmaking evangelism!

Top:Jo Price

Ginger Nut

Bartleby Series

Cardcut and drypoint

Edition: 15

Bottom:Jo Price

Mr Boythorn's Canary
Bleak House Series
Cardcut and drypoint
Edition: 15
All images copyright Jo Price

It’s been a fair few years since I did any relief printmaking; linocuts of course. These I did after I left art school and no longer had access to an etching press. As the subtlety and variation of marks, tones and textures of etching were what drew me to printmaking in the first place, and really suited my work, I found lino a bit frustrating. I know many artists are able to bring a delicacy and textural quality to this medium, but I just couldn’t. What I produced was so flat and chunky – and downright clumsy – that it just didn’t grab me at all. There followed an eight year hiatus during which I just drew a little and made the odd linocut. Luckily for me and my frustrated inner printmaker, an open access printmaking workshop opened up just down the road from me - and I was away!

Four and a half years of thirst-quenching intaglio printing later, I find that owing to family illness, I can’t get down to the workshop as often as I did. But I have to print, no matter what. Those wood engraving tools that I was given for my birthday over a year ago, and sit untried on the bookshelf, look mighty enticing now…

Wood engraving
What's that all about? I'm an intaglio printmaker by default; etching, drypoint and cardcuts. Personal circumstances, those annoying things that get in the way of one doing what one really wants to do, have all but wrenched the etching needle out of my inky hand and taken away the copper sulphate bath.

After a period of vowing never to print again, here I am, spitsticker in hand, discovering the wonders of end grain boxwood, lemon, pear and maple. Mostly maple because I'm not rich or very good. However, I am hopelessly hooked.