I need to start writing this more regularly. I keep having so many things I want to reflect on and have every intention of writing and then time escapes me. I have no idea how people with full time jobs keep up with al the making and the writing, they must be capable of functioning on very little sleep!
Anyway I thought I'd just pop down all my recent thoughts in one go, so here we go:
New prints & playing:
I've been playing with pressing dried plants into soft ground and etching it. I'm really pleased with this one.
the first stage was just the soft ground, then I added aquatint but carefully painted stop out over the impression left by the plant so as to just etch the background, then the lines around the plant weren't very crisp so I added hard ground and drew the in and gave it just less than a minute in the acid to gently etch a little detail in.
I'm really pleased with this little print. I particularly like that the little bits of chattery etch around the plant haven't been lost in the aquatint.
I'm now wondering whether I could cut a piece of lino to the exact size and shape and print some with a background colour. I'm also wondering about rainbow rolls and abstract shapes underneath, but very subtle shapes as the etching needs to be the main focus.
I'm planning to enter it for the Southbank Printmakers mini-print competition this year. I'm really hoping that I might actually sell something at this event - I won it the first year I entered in 2021 but have never sold anything. I want to repeat this but maybe with some grasses to see how they might come out. I must also find out the name of this little plant, it's found in the forest, mainly in shady areas at the edge of paths. I appears just as the bluebells fade and flowers for a month or so. I want to collect and press a little more before it disappears.
Doing this led me to wonder whether the reverse effect might be possible by painting caustic soda onto plants and pressing them onto lino to etch in their exact shape. I had some pressed fern leaves so I tried with those and it's rather lovely. (Ignore the colour - I just used whatever I had leftover).
I'm wondering what I could layer this with to create a really under-growthy type image. That seems to be part of the forest that's so present and important but isn't very exciting to depict. It would be nice to do something with it.
My husband says he likes it as it is, and he like the colour as it's unexpected and unusual to depict foliage in bright blue. I'm wondering about printing a couple and seeing what sort of reaction they get at the next couple of fairs I'm doing. I always seem to want to make things complicated... maybe I should keep it really simple occasionally. It is very tempting to put a monoprint over it though - printed directly from the ferns. I think I'll have to try it, especially as they're so abundant right now.
Surprise sales:
I don't often talk sales on here as it seems a bit....odd. I know that sales are no way to measure artistic success, but at the same time having someone willing to part with money for art means they must like it! I have been feeling very flushed with success recently as a few sales have been trickling in seemingly all by themselves. When I release a new print via a newsletter to subscribers I expect that if I'm going to get online sales that will be when they come, but I've sold several prints just out of the blue recently, including a big £200 one which was most exciting! I also had another person interested in the same one, although he decided it was just a little too big in the end, but still, the interest was exciting!
This all feels very positive. A couple of people have said that they've had their eye on my work for a while and have just been waiting for the right print to come along. Given that the cheapest thing I've produced this year was priced at £60, whereas last year I was regularly pricing around the £35 mark shows that people are willing to pay more of a fair price. This is so encouraging! Pricing is really hard since as soon as I enter something for a fair I can write off about 50% of the retail price but I can't undercut an exhibition so have to try to price things accordingly. This means I need to make work worth the higher prices so that I can afford to only pocket half the money.
I also had a great day at a craft fair in Thame last weekend. Usually I'd expect to sell about £40 worth of cards which covers the stall cost and petrol, but I only sold 3 taking £9! It seems the people that would usually buy cards can't afford to any more. However I sold 3 prints, for between £100 and £55 so clearly people are still willing to buy if they like something. It felt like a long hard day - the footfall was low and there weren't the little impulse buys so thank goodness for those three customers!
Research Paper:
Finally I've been meaning to write a little about how I'm feeling about the research paper. I'm looking at Neil Bousfield and Cézanne in the context of their attachment to place. It's really interesting. I've been worried that I hadn't picked the right artists but I think I have as I selected them because I'm so intrigued by them. Neil Bousfield is a very obvious choice for me: he's a printmaker, working in wood engraving and relief, depicting the exact bit of Norfolk coast I've been visiting since I was a child and explicitly explores place and our connection to it. Cézanne is a less obvious choice but I've always loved the impressionists and the wider circle of artists associated with them, particularly him. It was the discovery that he was a prolific watercolourist that first really attached me to him. I think his watercolours are simply fascinating. I've never seem anyone able to layer watercolour like he can and keep the colour so vibrant. When I was starting to explore art and figuring out what I might want to work in watercolour was a starting point, but its SO hard! I make mud, but I still sketch in watercolour (and water soluble crayons) and I still refer to my book on his drawings and watercolours. When I visited the exhibition in the Tate Modern earlier in the year I was struck by a paragraph describing how fascinated he was by Mont Sainte-Victoire and the fact that he learned all about its geology to better understand what he was looking at. This resonated with me since I have been trying to learn more about the management and history of the forest to better understand what I'm looking at. When I was casting about for a second artist I remembered this and it just seemed right. I'm really enjoying learning more about him and the challenge of finding information about his feelings towards the mountain to try to illustrate and prove my point that it is this deep rooted sense of place and knowledge about the place that provides the motivation and connection to make the work. As far as I can tell there seems to be very little writing that has directly considered it from this angle before (which surely can't be the case... I just haven't found it yet??!) I like a research challenge and this certainly seems to be a challenge, but one I'm enjoying so far. I'm looking forward to my tutorial next week to discuss it in more detail with my tutor.