These are some of the new prints I showed at Aldeburgh last week. They combine the direct drawing of lithography, with the painterly, unpredictable marks of monoprint. So each print is unique, 1/of 1.

 I’ve never felt convinced about the merits of hand making identical prints, especially since most people have a bubblejet printer. Giclee. You can give it a poncy Academy Francaise name, but it’s still duplicating. My friend Steve said ‘giclee’ is french for ejaculate. That sounds about right. It’s the printmaking process that motivates me, it’s difficulty and unpredictability. If the prints all look like clones, where’s the fun in that ?

This process is called lithography, but it has nothing to do with stone. It does use a flat plate though, unlike relief or intaglio printmaking. I’m drawing directly onto an aluminium plate, which I’ve abraded with wet and dry and pumice powder. I’m trying to get the surface as near as I can to toothy cartridge paper, which isn’t as easy as it sounds.

I really enjoy mixing the different monoprint inks on the painting slab, experimenting with plate oil and extender to start building layers, like glazes. This series includes some metallic ink. Each mix is unique too. Different amounts of tack, stiffness, density will repel or cover each other on the plate, so colours can be seperated and layered. Hayter called it viscosity monoprinting, and he really understood how to control that process. But there are no repeat performances for me. He was in control of this process but that kind of control doesn’t feel important for me.

This is painting by other means and just as labour intensive. The pulse of similarity and difference between each print is so compelling as they come off the press. Exciting, challenging, like improvising against a really good rhythm section.

Working with just one brush and two colours forces me to simplify. Working from memory and limited sketches forces me to keep my intentions clearly in mind. I think it also may have  the potential to turn a weakness into a strength. I hope it will make me more concise. I have a tendency to work fast and instinctively which on a bad day, can often overwhelm an idea. I think the best ideas are very timid, and I often lunge at them and scare them away. Brushes force me to be premeditative.

Working on this painting at the end of a long day printmaking reminded me of someting that my friend Rodger Worth said about direct painting - “It’s like tuning in an analogue radio. You move to either side of where you want to be until you find the right place.” Leaving out the sharp lines of drawing is liberating as well as scary. Brushes work in a similar way to our eyes, in flowing fields of light and colour. Perhaps for me painting is closer to looking but drawing is closer to thinking. I couldn’t imagine a day without drawing so also made a couple of A3 size lithographs, drawing directly on the aluminium plate.

Was a good day, in the end. Here’s the sketchbook plan for today :

Loads of freelance work to grip the body and mind, mostly props and painting and some carnival work. The props are Stymphalian Birds, for a show in Chester about the labours of Hercules. They got that right, I made 8 of them.

 I especially enjoyed doing the paintings. What is it about easels and frames and galleries that throttles the pleasure of painting ?  There’s something playful but purposeful about painting for the theatre. It’s so rewarding because working towards a performance has to be more collaborative, less ego driven. The work ends up less polite and prissy than working for a gallery show.

 Strangely all this activity left room for my heart and guts to think at their own pace. Guts and heart are good at asking the why questions, the questions you tell yourself you haven’t the time to ask. To be honest I’ve felt dissatisfied with business as usual since I came back from Skye and Orkney. As my dear friend Bill Brody said :

“I’m tired of doing art that I’m supposed to be doing”. 

He heads for the backwoods whenever he needs to think. He’s just back from a two week canoe trip in Beaver Creek Alaska. He’s very good at using the rigour of proper travelling because he has the practical stuff sorted, and keeps working whatever happens. The first thing he does is absorb himself into the silence. This allows the questions to appear at their own pace, and then it’s just a matter of waiting for an answer. It’s been the opposite of the backwoods for me - I’ve been in the studio without a break for nearly two months - crowded, sweaty, dusty and anxious. I love all of it. I particularly love working on things people actually want.

 Somehow the pressure of other peoples projects and deadlines means that the deeper bits of me carry on at their own pace without distracting themselves with making ‘Art’.

Art. I really dislike that word. Here we all are, queueing up for the last dance of the hominids. How can making eyeball pleasers be a priority ? How can desperately trying to get some airtime from the chatterati be a sensible job ? The trouble is, I never really got myself to believe that ‘artist’ was a proper job, even though I really wanted to be one. When I was younger (small kids and big mortgage) people who said they were artists either had rich parents or were blokes who talked all the time, drank most if the time and saw their kids intermittently. Or they lied about it and were really teachers. Never felt I belonged there, however much I was drawn to the work.

So I’m liking this theatrical painting. Make the stuff I care about, work fast (it’s later than you think), stick it in front of an audience and don’t blink first. Don’t need to perform, just need to mean it. So now I’m working for a local festival, a bunch of pre Christmas shows (Brighton art fair and Old Fire Engine House gallery in Ely and Open Studios in October).

I’m going to push the colour lithographs, do some more scenic painting and mostly I’m going to follow the stuff that excites me.

In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora.

Now look what’s happened. I’ve started re reading the Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by A D Melville.  I really wish I could read them in latin and wish even more that Richard Burton had recorded a talking book of them all so I could listen while I’m engraving.  

Isn’t Metamorphosis a spark idea ? It’s something I’ve been gripped by since I was a child and got me into my Changelings series. This series of engravings and paintings is a Dream Bestiary, based loosely on those 12th. century bestiaries where most of the creatures were made up. That and those wonderful theatrical spaces that Goya made in his Disparates and Capriccios .

Mutation, shape shifting, play acting. There is something very erotic about the friction between memory and anticipation. What I now have to do is work on the portable form that this work will take. Books, boxes pop ups and theatres .. watch this space.