I’m just framing the new prints, for the 12PM show at Church St. gallery in a week. They are the first prints I’ve made from the drawings I did at the Royal Opera House. I’ve combined drypoint with monoprinting – juggling hard with soft, tight with loose. I’ve also used the different viscocity of inks to direct (somewhat) the mixing of tone and colour. In reality there’s very little ability to repeat from one pull to another so it’s painting by other means, which is completely ok with me.

This printmakers obsession with repeatability has been troubling me for some time. Mostly because I suspect it’s largely generated by galleries and dealers rather than by artists. If you are going to make money out of selling art you need to control availability. The best artists for this are obviously dead, but if they aren’t then numbered editions are a close second. We are told it’s about legacy, the same reason why some materials are called ‘archival’. I’d say work gets ‘archived’ when we think it’s good, it has less to do with materials than we assume. Work on the scuzziest materials are conserved if the work is good enough. Take Constables wonderful oil paintings on bits of cardboard. Because they are intense and zing with energy and because they are the first thought through example of oil painting that escaped the easel they have been kept in pristine condition.

We need to re think what we mean by ‘legacy’ anyway, and admit to ourselves where the ‘archive’ is now. It’s getting less likely to be in a hand made piece of paper and more likely to be in a data farm hidden away on one of the ‘flyover ‘ states like Nebraska. All our doings, our legacy, will be there until the power gets cut. I’m really not sure how I feel about this, but there it is. For me, the ideal of repeatable prints has less gravitas that it did. My way of dealing with that is to do the best work I can and leave the ‘archive’ to others. The show at Church St. gallery will be much easier to find that the data farm which holds my ‘legacy’ -

Church St. Gallery Saffron Walden UK

PV : Thursday 26 April 6.00 – 10.00pm. 17 Church Street, Saffron Walden, Essex CB10 1JW. Tel: 01799 522947 Email: info@church-street-gallery.co.uk

 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.

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.