I’m excited that my show at Artmill, Plymouth is opening tonight. We’re showing many of my prints from 2010 to 2020. I’m looking forward to sharing this work with Plymouth, celebrating 10 years of printmaking.
This exhibition brings together an intense period when I devoted himself to printmaking. These 10 years changed the way I worked forever.
Film
To learn more about the technique of lino cutting, you can watch this film on You Tube, filmed at my exhibition Still Life with Blackbirds at Corinium Museum Cirencester.
How can printmaking change the way you draw & paint?
At the heart of linocut and woodcut is the ability to work in relief. This is due to a sculptural approach, because the artist carves into lino or wood to make the print. Way back in the 19th century, relief printing was often called sculpture. They were acknowledging that sculptural skills were required to achieve a successful relief print.
This type of printmaking became a physical experience: super-imposing flat colours onto each other and creating shaped, carved, lyrical lines. I was experimenting and playing. As a result, these same lines started to appear in my drawings and paintings.
Colour is paint
For me, colour is paint. This is an immersive experience, so I make my own paints from pure pigments. I started to experiment with a new technique of printmaking, using the same pure pigments that I use in my paintings. I began to layer one colour on top of another. This enabled me to achieve an intensity of colour that was very different to what I was achieving in my paintings. This process taught me that I could use colour to do more work for me.
Flat colour and shaped line
Whilst on a residency in China in 2018, a Chinese poet commented that my devotion to flat colour and shaped line had much in common with their East Asian approach. Flat colour and shaped line are the hallmarks of Asian paintings and prints. I know how much printmaking has informed Chinese painting over the years.
Japanese influence on European painting
Now that I have family in Japan, I’m keen to make something happen between our islands. Japanese prints have had a huge influence on European painting. I was blown away by the epic scale of the painted screens in the Tokyo National Museum when I visited Tokyo in 2023. On top of this, I saw so many outstanding prints. I felt strangely at home with these artistic traditions. On return to the UK, I dug out all my books on the great colourists, Matisse, Van Gogh, Bonnard and Vuillard. Clearly, Europeans have absorbed these print traditions since the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I feel very much at home with these traditions.
Colour as a language
Colour is a language. I am constantly looking for ways to make colour work harder. For me, paint is colour. So, it’s not just about the physical presence of the paint, but also about how it makes that emotional connection. For me, colour is a language that enables me to express myself as a visual poet and discuss The Other. These red and orange relief prints were a real breakthrough for me.
10 years of printmaking
The work in this print show explores Red and Orange, a Warm / Cold Contrast and a Light / Dark Contrast. This is what I was working on before I arrived in Plymouth. Since moving to the Ocean City, I have focussed on the colour Green, culminating in my thesis A Manifesto of Painting.
10 years of Printmaking runs from Friday 4th October to Saturday 2nd November, 10am-5pm (gallery closes lunch time on Saturdays).
Artist talk
Join me on Thursday 10th October at 5pm when I will be at Artmill, talking about the work on show.
