Paean / One day in May / Print Club ed #14 in progress
I wanted to make a piece for the Print Club that would speak about the lockdown, but also of joy, the beauty of nature, and the inspiration that manifests, whilst also continuing with the idea of the moment in time, and the specificity of a place, that I hope has been one of the major threads of the print club project to date
Critique and action / Plastic pastoral / Tao
These two latest prints are entitled Tao. One is earth, one is sand. Back in the eighties when my main concern would’ve simply been about how to create and sustain a creative studio practice, I was hugely influenced and impressed by the work of April Greiman. I’m not sure if her works have stood the test of time, but in many ways that is not the point, I love the idea that a work in some way defines or represents the moment that it is made in.
Print Club, edition 13 in progress
I’m working on some initial colour proofs for my first Experimental Print Club edition of 2020. If you’d like to know more about my Print Club. It’s an ongoing experiment in contemporary print, and an opportunity to collect exclusive limited edition works from the studio, posted out directly to club members, alongside invitations to events, and studio news. All powered by Patreon.
Pride 2020
Starting the week with a post to highlight my recent work in support of the the LGBT Foundation. The Pride print is available as an open edition for 12 months only, ending on 31st October 2020. You can read more about the work on Blackwater’s website
interStella / QUAD
intersStella is a new series of sixteen drawings, arranged into four quads, with four works in each quad. These new works on paper comprise Venn like geometries based on circadian rhythms, bought to life with a series of sixteen colour variants, which I hope speak to the idea of the four seasons, plant life, and perhaps tulips in particular. They clearly also riff on the work of Frank Stella, a true hero of colour abstraction
Hive #1 / EPC / duality : singularity
I’ve been working on a new series of drawings called Hive. It’s currently unclear exactly how these studies are going to ultimately manifest themselves, but I suspect it’ll be as a series of large format panels, possibly in sequence. For the moment however, I thought I’d print a single, smaller component of the series as a new piece for my Experimental Print Club. I’ve been thinking about the nature and problem of working in a rapidly climate changing world, and how best to integrate that thinking with my daily studio practice, both as a series of reflections, which is a large part of what the studio is about I think, and as physical works that can create some kind of response to the concepts we’re being asked to consider, and act on.
Experimental Print Club #11
I’ve just dispatched edition #11 for the print club. It’s titled interStella / EPC / home. The piece combines a variant from my new interStella series with photography from the garden, specifically the soil under my sweet peas. I like the idea of experimenting with ideas around combining drawing and photography, and of course the subject matter alludes to ideas including the sense of place, the idea of growth, and the earth, or soil, as root, and begins to unpack some new ideas about permaculture, and how that may sit with my practice in the future.
interStella 2019
I’ve been working on a new series of 16 drawings, entitled interStella. It’s kind of a mash up of a number of geometries I’ve been studying, but most obviously an exploration, and complication, of the maths underlying the early works of American legend Frank Stella. I first saw his beautiful, epic, artworks at MOCA in LA in 1991, and was completely blown away. So it’s been on my mind for a long time to try and unpack some of his thinking, and riff on that beautiful style that came out of NYC in the late sixties. I hope I’ve bought a little fresh thinking and technique to bear too.
Halcyon / dark carnival and Revolver / oxidised at Catto, June 2019
Lovely to get a new commission to produce a pair of drawings for an Austrian collector this June. These two pieces, Halcyon and Revolver are both 120cm square.
Klint / CUT, Experimental Print Club Edition #9
Spent a good day yesterday working on the 9th edition for my Experimental Print Club. I’ve been making 3 or 4 smaller ephemeral works on paper each year for the club, as a kind of loosening up idea, with the intention of trying out new ideas that may feedback into my main practice, whilst simultaneously creating some hopefully quite collectable smaller works that go out to club members in the post. It’s a nice concept that coerces me to make some new smaller works each year.
Print Club Edition 8
Edition 8 is going to be a celebration of Spring, and in particular that particularly beautiful combination of greens, pinks and deeper carmines that marks out the first flush of really powerful colour that comes out here in May. I've attached an image here of my new tulip border, that I planted deep in the midst of last winter, with freezing hands, sure in the knowledge that I would get a sensational blast of colour as the gardening year really gets going this spring. I have to say that I didn't plan for the bright orange ones, but in fact they have been a serendipitous addition that has no doubt been bolder and better than my original choices.
Stellify / TWO / cerise glaze commission, May 2018
Great to have an opportunity to revisit my 2017 Stellify / TWO drawing this spring. Commissioned with a silver / lilac cutout central core, as opposed to the original yellow / gold component.
Dazzle / 12 bar
I spent the weekend making a new 10 colour pigment print for the opening night of my new show 'Current' at Catto Gallery. And now that it's packed in cellophane and looking rather fab, I realised that I could tuck a few prints to one side for my Print Club members. So I'll look forward to posting one out to you in a week or two's time. I hope it'll brighten up your home as autumn settles in…
Gallery opening, Swindon, Friday June 2nd
With just 2 weeks to go, I thought I'd send over a final post for today, to invite you to the opening of a small solo show at Swindon's latest gallery - Oink. Curated by Mark Pepperall, it's a delight to be included on the roster, and for this 6 week show, I'll be exhibiting about 15 pieces, including an 8ft edition of Eight Ball mounted to Perspex, which I hope will be quite something.
Experimental Print Club Edition 5 proofed
For Edition 5, being posted back to back with Edition 4, I've made a new print of one of the best 'Systematic Variations' that I've been working on over the past couple of months. For this Print Club edition, the work has been printed 'cut to colour' on Kodak metallic stock, and then 'tipped in' to a debossed sheet of handmade Somerset 100% cotton paper. I like the locality of the stock, and I think there's a certain interest in the idea of 'tipping in'. A little like the way colour plates used to be added to books before mass market colour printing really arrived. There's a lively contrast between the crisp clarity of the cut edge and the altogether more haptic debossed edge too…
Print Club Edition 4 proofed
I've been working on a pair of new Print Club editions over the past few weeks and months, and as they near completion I'm pleased to be able to send you a little news to let you know how they're shaping up. To celebrate the arrival of the new 10 colour digital printer, and indeed the arrival of summer too, I'm going to send out a double Print Club mailing, editions 4 and 5, at the same time. I hope you like them! In truth I feel a little behind the curve here, so I hope this double edition will go some way towards catching up…
Kinetic / double quad / commission, April 2017
Great to be commissioned to produce a new Kinetic / double quad set, some ten years after the work was exhibited at ‘Transistor at the Southbank’. An interesting opportunity to revisit some of these older pieces.
Systematic variations
Thought I'd post a couple of new studies, test pieces really, that may well form part of a larger new series of variations. I'm working with the title SysVar or Systematic Variations, and am greatly enjoying working out a series of new methods for creating the inter related works, that may form the backbone of a new print folio. That's the outline plan anyway…
Talk tonight at Bath Contemporary / March 3rd 2017
Apologies for the very short notice, but if you're near Bath tonight, and you're not busy, you may like to visit Bath Contemporary at 6pm, where I'm giving a short talk to launch my new show of works there.
Motorik / WIP / Feb 2017
Thought I’d post a new study from my ‘Motorik’ series. I’m going to produce it as a pigment print on Somerset, no doubt at The Fine Art Print Company here in Bristol