these images are not illustrations but a counterpoint to the poems....
These are still very rough scribbly proofs mostly hand-coloured for ideas and so very pale at the moment....some still not printed at all.....
Apologies for the long gap - I have been completely re-thinking them after this, cutting extra blocks, re-thinking some existing ones and re-cutting...
and at what seems to be a pivotal time in civilisation ( would we were not just rushing to get back to 'normality' ) - there are some exciting changes afoot in the artworld, perhaps temporary, maybe more permanent....
no more big blockbuster shows for the time being - crowded, inevitably costly and often not a very satisfactory experience, wonderful tho they might be...
to seeing less and marvelling more , a quality experience...
the questioning of the museum's place in our new world, the statue debate, Black Lives Matter, 'Outsider Art' - always a contentious term....
I have been following up on some contemporary artists less well known to me who seem to have interesting solutions and ideas...
all leading inevitably to re-evaluating my own ideas and practise...
no major changes beyond broadening and deepening but always a useful process, especially on days when a certain exhaustion inevitably sets in after 3-4 months of constant work...
It is interesting to consider how much this initiates the process or whether it is the work under construction itself which pushes things in new directions...
as does having to work within the limitations of things to hand in some cases.
Limitations always move one towards experimentation so no harm in that, although just currently problematic when 3/4 way through a project which in some ways needs to hang together...
Current technical cogitations centre around the balance between hand-colouring and printing in these new circus cards: I like keeping to the nod to the social and political origins of the hand colouring while also making it work in this case aesthetically.
I am currently trialling a triad of oil-based block over water based block layers plus the hand painting...next week will tell whether it will work.
I am always obsessed by texture, how matt and how shiny, layering and how colours are formed...dates back to all that tempera painting I once did I suppose.
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