Ryedale Open and Deer Shed over, it's back in the studio to get on with some work. Had a chat with Andy Dalton this morning, he popped in on his way to drop off 2 prints at Ducket and Jeffreys Gallery in Malton for their Open Print exhibition. He thought the studio was great and said that it looked like I'd been there for ages. Andy's monoprints are based on landscape, lovely soft tones of grey, I really like them and look forward to seeing more.
Before Andy arrived, I had been taking down drawings and works on paper and thinking about what I wanted to do. So far, with the painting side of things, I have been using up some canvases that I've had kicking around for ages to make studies. The drawing has been going really well and I was considering that it is now time to launch into making some large paintings that will incorporate the drawing and painting experience so far. I am thinking that working on a much larger scale will keep the excitement going, force me to adapt to address problems as they arise and that this experience will then feed back into the works on paper and so on and so on. . . .
I was originally intending to do 2 or 3 paintings on this piece of canvas, but once I had put a layer of gesso on it, I began to get excited at the thought of using it for one large painting.
While I was at the Deer Shed Festival, Stef Mitchell, curator of Duckett and Jeffreys Gallery in Malton, showed me some of her sketch books in which she is investigating her ideas to do with landscape using monoprinting. This inspired me to try some quick monoprinting for myself while I waited for the gesso to dry on the large canvases that I have stapled to the boards of my studio. I have always really enjoyed monoprinting and it was interesting trying out the water soluble inks with my roll of Chinese paper bought for me by Mike and Elaine. I was quite absorbed by it and found myself running out of the paper that I had prepared quite quickly. The results are not brilliant but I shall use them to draw on to and put them into the new concertina Chinese sketch book that I have started, in which I am exploring text, thoughts and imagery together.
Sally Taylor, who is in the studio above me, popped in for a chat with Andy and I, and we all went upstairs to look at her new work, which is a really strong, interesting development of the previous "mouth" pieces. These are "head and neck" images, monochrome, using black tape and drawing. Andy and I really love them. Sally popped in to my studio later in the day to talk about entering more open submission competitions. She has enough new work to do this, but I want to concentrate on making new work for the rest of the year, we agreed that was the best route for me. Sally is the best neighbour to have: an interesting artist and a lovely person who is really encouraging!
Monoprinting experiments
Chinese sketch book
I need to be a little more organised and tidy when I continue with any printmaking in future!
Before I left for home at around 5pm, I considered this painting that I have on the go and added another layer of warm yellow on top of the tally marks. . . .
Duckett and Jeffreys has a print open starting this week for anyone who is interested, all my prints, such as they are, are in storage otherwise I'd be entering! Work can be submitted all week for hanging, check out their fb page for more details.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Duckett-and-Jeffreys-Gallery/121895387847701
www.duckettandjeffreys.com
All images copyright of Sue Gough
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