Wreckage

So I am back into flooding ( tho my basement survived yesterdays southerly wind and rain) and cut the last drawings from yesterday; I have got into that awful place where now I prefer the right hand one (particularly) this way round, and hope I don't have to do it again - because it was rather creatively cut - its probably just the 'shock of the new' thing.....hopefully.....

And I want to revisit some of the larger flooding images and re-do them smaller and differently - this enforced time staying in working is such a good opportunity to rethink things and let them develop, and not finish projects too quickly....

I might just be able to mask off and re-use the face as it is; and I'll play with the others tomorrow.....

By the way if you are new to this blog, the Covid daily art diary starts back on Saturday March 23rd so you will have to click on older posts, and/or March if you want to start at the beginning and find out what it is all about....its very rambling but then making art often is.....

More Rain and grey

Re- my man in a tree - I thought of making a little model of him with wire and papier mache - plenty of scope for bandages - to insert into a tiny little olive wood box I have , but then realised what the comforting protecting tree was becoming - I think its called a coffin... wooden boat is much the same sometimes....(back to the Viking ancestors)

(Watched the discussion with Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kotting this evening that Gareth Evans set up with the LRB bookshop, about Kotting's lovely film The Whalebone Box which I watched earlier in the week...really beautiful, his best yet....a good slow covid-time film)

plenty of my images coming through in all ways now.... a weeping world, or is it bleeding, with a wailing tree...

I made a new Ship of Fools image to suit the portrait card format, and then started developing ideas in both emblematic and naturalistic format as I did in the original larger Ship of Fools in both formats - beginning to see new connections and ways they could be grouped or make new sets and tell different stories.... the image above is my free interpretation from Brant's original book...see 20th April post...

I need to alternate drawing and cutting because cutting the tiny complicated ones sets off  tendonitis in my right arm from years of too much of it - I use a different set of muscles for these small ones than the larger ones... but when I get compulsive it is hard to stop....

Rain!

First rain for so long! Bit gloomy.
And stressful! Today a text from mobile saying all Virgin customers have to change their SIM cards for a new one we will be sent  - what timing! Don't they know there are millions of ageing technophobes like me for which this deeply disturbing - I lost half my contacts I did it last time and that was with a son helping, and now we have no-one to help us and currently reliant on our phones for essential supplies - idiots....

The man in the tree is wearing it like a coat;
P and I have photographed each other inside trees like this on our walks around Firle - which seems long ago already
- and I have previously made a whole series of trees wearing coats...

This was the only one that came to hand - the others must be  in my studio...
my strong associations with trees and coats are comfort and protection  ( for further comfort of coats see Colline in  La Boheme singing farewell to his ancient overcoat to pay for Mimi's medicine...)

The lovely thing about this small size work is that I can play with several cuttings - linear like no.3 and therefore more emblematic in playing card style; or more naturalistic like the middle one and the way I cut this tree before; I could hand colour no.3 as I did previous sets, as traditionally in old chapbooks and prints, or print over newspaper,
or play with printing 3 over the middle one in different colours - but it might be better to cut a third version with less detail for that;
now I have all the time in the world- I thought I should be starting a large project but maybe this one is large - but it is just made up of lots of small components...

I could write a post on the cultural implications of different ways of cutting...but maybe another time...

Eking out and hoarding

I have done far more drawings than this today but the photos I send from my phone are sometimes getting clogged up in the email delivery - I guess we are all using it to communicate more, tho why some get delayed more than others and leapfrog over each other is beyond me....but I will have to operate a day behind myself for you....
Doing these small cards feels really the right scale physically and metaphysically in current circumstances so I am suddenly devising whole new packs that can still mix and match - a new fool cycle, some Ship of Fools and floods images, even possibly considering turning some Tristan and Isolde images I was working on into tarot cards maybe - all fate and potions, dark as the gypsy cards in Carmen ...

two images above could fit a variety of places - if the second one was a fine wine I would say it had flavours of wounded man/pilot/fallen angel/wreckage- of tree and man
lots more still coming...

Sunny Sunday blues

I know it's Sunday but I can feel myself slowing down inexorably each day - softening up, enjoying myself reading and watching stuff, following up all sorts of ideas on my phone( v unlike me) - it could all be productive but too many ideas can be a bane too.....
beating the aforementioned malaise (see yesterday) has taught me that to manage it I need constant shots of adrenaline and this current life is getting too cosy,

(the swede was really delicious by the way...)

however I have found creative adrenaline in re-visiting some abandoned playing card ideas - under the pretext of completing a 'set', and also rejecting some already done and wanting to try some new ones; printing will be the test as to which actually work or are at least satisfyingly ambivalent....
I am even allowing myself to drink coffee again, normally far too dangerous if working hard ...

Ah - the all-seeing eye; a good excuse to try out some different ways of cutting and mark making; and ideas from the fool cycle working back into the cards.....

Still cutting

I think my reluctance to commit to printing is partly because I am worried about my finite paper supply and the ethics and etiquettes of ordering more - so am waiting to feel sure and prioritise my various projects....also when I am on a creative roll I tend to go with it and just keep cutting - printing is creative too but in a different more energetic way....it is also good for getting warm so I am saving it for grey, cool basement days to come.

So today here I have been cutting more on earlier fool blocks, and more fool/tree playing card images suddenly coming to me, also more blocks for the Fool Gets Sick cover - lettering etc - plenty to do over a sunny weekend.
I feel nervous venturing out as covid creeps closer up our road and the graveyard is like Piccadilly Circus on sunny days and hard not to bump into or talk to neighbours - viral malaise has been the bane of my life so I really don't want this virus even if my dodgy lungs survived it.
I've cut a happy Spring tarot card  - my flocks of nesting sparrows continue to entrance and cheer ....

2 more fool cuts

In the bottom one you can see the huge gaps revealed in the layers of plywood beneath - it was one of those particularly hazardous pieces where once a cut is made whole sheets of the top layer want to detach themselves immediately - and you have to take care, wood glue to hand. On this sort of piece a very particular type of incidental marks happen which can sometimes be nice - the flat areas revealed may be nice for the sky and sails.
Sometimes on a particularly intuitive day I can suspect how a piece of wood might cut but not always, which makes life more exciting. Lots of complaints about this Asian plywood on-line but I always think - go on, live dangerously....

The trees seem to be making themselves more anthropomorphic - those bending solicitously like carers or health workers, one already wounded it seems....seems a bit whimsical written down but its the sort of thing which goes post hoc subliminally through my head while continuing working and that I am currently sharing with you...
You may find your own ideas and interpretations but the bandaged tree also reminds me of those Tree of Jesse images rooted in medieval loins, something about the positioning perhaps, plenty more possibilities, but partly it just gives structure to the design...

Last night my neighbours jackpot Ocado delivery ( I just love these late night disinfecting sessions) delivered a swede instead of celeriac - quite a different proposition...however I do have cream and nutmeg to hand fortuitously and P will eat anything with enough cream on it...and fortunately neither of us have weight issues beyond trying to keep body and soul together ...
bring on the comfort chocs! happy weekend......

St George's Day

I suppose it is as much an art diary to report what has STOPPED me working today - opened a chest of drawers to find a summer cardigan and discovered moth carnage - necessitating a morning washing, sort and chucking out stuff - grim....
at least 3 layers of books had been blocking access to said drawers for some while - a salutary lesson: books will one day pull this house down...
I try to be very ecological hoarding clothes  for decades but nature too gets us in the end - red in grubs and dusty wings - poor clothes, whole arms munched off - unbelievable, Vilanelle no contest - tho have been getting fed up with that weekly carnage too

And another red letter day - another bookish term of course - St George this time to celebrate and you can see why people needed these events in medieval times, and now when every day seems very similar to the last...
in the absence still of my last two woodblocks, nearly finished - will post up tomorrow...
I shall post up a painting by my good friend and good artist Dagmara Rudkin which cheers me up and down my stairs every day: it is of St George, saving Princess Sabra from the dragon, and fishing her out of her bath...... I love it

Earth Day

I haven't finished cutting the last two images yet - am doing them in tandem while I think and decide how best to do them and whether I am going to commit to doing two blocks per image - I need to know now for one of the images particularly...

so to celebrate the fiftieth Anniversary of Earth Day in these difficult times which require deep thought and new resolutions perhaps - you know my views by now...
I am just going to post up some small woodcut images from a fairly recent book I did with James Simpson's poems, called Some Light Remains (a few may be still available!) to celebrate the simple things in life and fruits of the earth...
...it reminds me that I was going to make a tunnel or peepshow book of the Cockerel poem and I have actually got some more blocks cut for it waiting to be printed on my ever growing pile..... 

I am sorry they are slightly squiffy - I can assure you I wasn't but was balancing the book on my lap and taking the photos with one finger... and there is one other image I didn't post as it didn't seem quite so relevant....

The Hospital Trolley

Well at least Our Leader has shown us it is not necessarily the end of the line.... but still a bit close to the bone as I now have family all down with the virus in Spain...  I finished  more of the top image today and made a start on the second; one more to go ..... and then no more excuses not to go down and do a lot printing in my rather dark ( and currently still rather damp) basement rather than cut in the sunshine; surely it can't be as sunny as this forever but it is so nice.....

Suffering Fool

For the next image the camera pulls back a little and the fool looks smaller; the trees are suffering as he is - in sympathy? or because the planet is suffering too?

When discussing woodcutting yesterday I should have said that it is also a relentlessly exposing experience - and shows up any  ambiguous inconsistencies in the drawing, no fudging possible, although the cutting can also produce its own inconsistencies quite interestingly sometimes....  the drawing is only a possible plan and I modify it as I go along...
I haven't finished this one today because I had major wobblies at first as top which way this fool should face - I was was so sure yesterday how to progress, but then the next day, and looking at the mirror image again afresh , always throws up a new ideas and complications - was going right to  left looking back? ( unless you are Asian of course) , today I felt more in favour of him in this particular image going left to right - but today's block needs to be the same direction as yesterdays doesn't it? or perhaps on reflection not....actually once printed ( and reversed) the two fools will be more back to back and it will be more interesting, are if they are making choices, feel more like a maze perhaps...

I should also have long ago shown you the inspiration for the Ship of Fools - the book by Sebastian Brant of the same name (Das NarrenSchyff) with woodcuts by an assortment of people , including Durer it is thought; I was lucky to find a nice Folio Society 'facsimile' in the charity shop... image one (the frontispiece) and 3 (31) are possibly Durer's.....

More Fool than One

Finished some more to this Queue for the .......
which reminds me of my favourite cartoon, a man on a rowing boat full of hunched figures with a mobile clamped to his ear -' I'm on the Styx....'

and then I cut this one all day... a sort of Poor Tom's a Cold, or Winterreise wanderer, self imposed?/drummed out of town pursued by the town dogs...
the planet forcing us into the Wilderness to experience what it is really like...
its interesting how those politically to the right are quicker to want to force us all back out of isolation, to 'normality'...to stop us learning the resilience of isolation,
fascinating how the world divides politically over response to the crisis.. We are not looking good, although polls show people here voting for life over economics  although the economic case is very complicated -
an economics of sharing is needed , but how long will we remember... our national character produces problems of our own making which the ongoing national epic then shows us overcoming with bulldog style. What will we pull off this time.... hopefully a vaccine in due course...

My Fool now seems a slightly different character in each image, so perhaps Fool is actually a collection of survivors from the Ship......
I'm happy cutting - but also keep feeling the urge to be able to exhibit the completed Covid work - the Covid Tarot and and Fool gets Sick, but the reality is -  its always a slow process;
this 'being more kind to myself ' we are all urged to pursue isn't helpful - for me as in stopping and getting enough sleep, watching the odd dvd and reading more without feeling guilty...an ideal for slow time perhaps but the piquance of a more frenetic life alongside is usually helpful too...
I realise my work may be out of date by the time I can show it - we will want to be 'moving on' - but I also feel a need to share and experience it deeply... reflect, learn, discuss...

Walking in the graveyard was particularly heavenly this evening, Downland hillside, amazing late sunshine and birdsong...I am so glad I have my plot booked there, I may not be breathing but hopefully I will feel it all in my bones.....

After the rain

And - after I had finished blogging last night there was suddenly some almighty claps of thunder, and lightning - which I usually enjoy and thought might clear the air - but then torrential rain which, not unusually, suddenly poured down our small sloping backyard from the Downs above and streamed under the backdoor - flooding the kitchen/studio...
so a miserable hour or so at midnight spent swabbing and mopping to clear up.....fortunately the rest of the night was dry

so - back to woodcutting this morning ( with a rather sore arm from the swabbing) and another couple of lugubrious images....

The background town-scape was inspired originally by the Shanghai skyline: it may be the first of the series. A masked father and child are passing, turning to look at the miserable Fool - or is he just the ghost of a shopping trolley, he seems to have grown into it...if it seems necessary I will include some pale legs on a second block - all these just first steps.... and they are of course the wrong way round so as to be correct when printed... altho at this stage I start questioning myself and making different narrative possibilities for if they are facing the other way....

Are these figures queuing for the sale or the Styx....this may be number 3, after the image shown a couple of days ago.....

it was originally from a scribble drawing I made inspired by some Extinction Rebellion protesters doing something interesting in their red gowns, but now it has quite unconsciously become more like something from the Catacombs in Palermo...  which I visited 2-3 years ago - an extraordinary and poignant place. 

A good walk out of the centre of town it is now a popular tourist destination but should be treated with respect as the monks who look after it request, and artistically in a careful way too. I saw an advert for a new book of photos recently and the glossy paper and dark blacks seemed completely wrong for a place of literally shades, of greys and faded fabrics, gossamer webs, transience, liminal space...a place not without all the humour and foibles of humanity yes, but where so difficult to render the ambivalence of emotion and atmosphere....

An interesting word that 'render' - as artists we do often plunge in like vultures, rapacious, greedy, as the living are... but we must still take care, I question my own gothic tendances all the time and worry about my Fool book...

I hope the wood will sort things out as I cut - woodcut has its own history, clunky but based in past folktales, gruesome images and caricatures, broadsheets and politics....

Our Palermo landlady - a medic as it happened - told us her story of being accidentally shut in the catacombs overnight in her youth with a young medical man; when the monk let them out in the morning he berated them for getting 'deliberately' lost and in his eyes up to no good...

ah ..sex and death, duende - the story as told by her was very Sicilian in a nicely ambivalent way....

An Up and Down day

It seemed particularly quiet when lying awake this morning - dull days seem even quieter when no-one is desperate to get out of the house perhaps. I thought I was pretty happy hunkered down here working but there suddenly seems a lack of energy in the air; perhaps it was yesterday's announcement that some of us may be having to isolate for another year or more - that's a long time at this point in my working life, especially if those younger are partying elsewhere...
What do I miss most - there's certainly plenty I  don't, but having to miss out Artists Book fairs and events for a while is depressing; and when will I next see my grandsons - 2 of them abroad - 18months is a long time in their young lives, will my me space fill in and seal over , they are not as interested in skyping as their parents despite their previous love of screen time - I am consoled that they are enjoying playing with real things and seem to be coping well, and like children from earlier times they seem more relaxed...I remember spending a lot of unstructured time in the fifties doing not much at all - except building inner resources perhaps...

Once I got working today I summoned a bit of adrenalin; am working steadily but too slowly, may be good for me but I feel I am running down like an old clock needing a battery...
and there's another thing - my kefir grains don't seem to be multiplying at their usual rate..
and they have been my talisman for good health ever since my dear Artist Book friend Dmitry Sayenko introduced it to me in Russia: we've known each other for over 20 years now, having bonded over a plastic cup of vodka behind a large potted plant at an FPBA fair at the Barbican Centre ( hours before sun over the yard-arm - lordy) - he kindly called me heroic Russian woman, referring I think to the size of my woodcuts and books - and now we probably won't meet up as planned this year at the Book Fair, another small tragedy....
All my children ferment anything that stands still long enough - and people around me seem to be doing the same with their excess time, but I've no grains to spare - I think they must be objecting to
being fed non-organic milk due to current logistics ( grab anything going ) - all these little shrinkages now in daily life....

And now suddenly a dear friend has died - not unexpectedly but still a tragedy - and no chance of a proper funeral or hugging the bereaved.....

One image from The Untenanted Room comes to mind... it was sort of denoting existential angst in the Wasteland I suppose....
aaargh....

More of the same

Started cutting blocks - you can see one was finished and photo taken in the morning and the other in the afternoon by the light...
neither are finished properly but I may wait and see how the others start turning out and respond accordingly. You can see how I scribble on the block as I go along - sometimes so I can see what I've got so far - and sometimes to work out a difficult bit as it changes from a drawing into a woodcut .
You can see in the top one too - the white strip running underneath middle right to left - how there is sometimes a sneaky bit of white paper they have used to fill in the wood that appears in the middle layer once you start cutting - it's terribly annoying sometimes as you don't get the same sort of cutting marks where the top layer cuts easily off the paper - but working with this cheap plywood is all about going with the flow and surprising oneself with how you adapt...keeps you on your toes....

I loved the abstract challenge of cutting the maze and just enjoying the shapes and seeing what the cutting marks did almost in a trance. I am going to use it for the cover image I think, with a smaller fool printed in the middle and some big lettering across the bottom for the title.

Sounds as if we are all going to have get used to having to adapt as they announced more weeks of lock-down today but also an indefinite future of it for those in high risk categories; not much hope for our sort of book fairs if they want us to continue social distancing; it doesn't come much more intimate than a book fair table with our heads all bent over the books.....

Coming into Focus

Easter breaks have made me go soft - I am doing too much reading - currently now re-reading Sebald and essays about him ( in large hardbacks) - he is the master of the unspeakable...

Perhaps what the Fool was employed to do at the Royal Courts was speak Truth to Power , all as a big joke.....

I am now focusing in on cutting the set preparing the blocks, size and grain direction, thinking about how many to each image - they need more complexity than the 'Ship of ' ones, more depth of focus;
and I am checking I have enough paper of the right kind - and how they will fit economically on the paper-size - this is a landscape format rather than portrait like Ship ....lots of burrowing under the bed and in the emptying sagging paper packets along the hall....
Fool seems to be becoming a more proactive figure than a reactive victim, but either way it doesn't bode well, he seems destined to the same end...will he die laughing like Petrushka or Tyl, possibly not....