Update to The Antidote at St Anne's Gallery

See post below for the dates of the exhibition - opens tomorrow evening for 3 weekends


- new thoughts for The Antidote included a large new Punch and Judy woodcut (definitely domestic violence here) - and I got quite obsessed with Virtus Combusta when I saw it at the wonderful Mantegna Bellini at the NG exhibition before Christmas – Mantegna of course one of the first painter/printmakers so I have played with that in drypoint and monoprint and woodcut; it seems so much an image for our times….. the original is somewhat misogynistic – I have made the figures even more androgynous…

Humanity stumbles towards an abyss guided by Lust, Folly and Deceit; Ignorance watches from a throne on a globe beside burning laurels, served by Fate and Avarice. Hermes appears to try to intervene….

The exhibition also seemed a good point to get down to designing some playing cards – it will still be a partial set and in no way conventional but I can return to it at times of stress... I have always wanted to design cards – the shape and size is so appealing, nice and small to chip away at in comparison with my large woodcuts...

Cards have always been used in a variety of ways, gaming, patience, fortune telling and tarot cards, leading to a range of expressions and metaphors - playing your cards right etc

I like the idea of an ever-changing deck of images that can be endlessly rearranged, sparking off new ideas and narratives… I have been printing my woodcuts on old newspapers from the last month as I feel it answers the need for a patina of age, history and complexity which all the best old cards have - part of their magic for tarot reading; it can also can include topicality and satirical comment if you can decipher what is beneath my printing... and even if you can’t it is still there; and ambiguity mirrors the process of a ‘reading’ – why did I choose that image to print on? (apart from its colour) - read my thoughts and add your own….


Work in Progress!