Mono and Lino printing editions

I tought I would follow the 20x20 post with a post about the printing that I am working on and the edition I sent to the 20x20 exhibition at the Hotbed Press in Salford. I have been enjoying experimenting with Gelli prints and although it is difficult to edition something so variable, I chose to make an edition of monoprints of the childrens shoes. The theme of the shoes has been a continuing one since lockdown and the paintings I made about childhood, so the shoes represent the artist as a child. I was focussing on a particular event from my childhood that I remember distinctly of being out on a walk with the family on a summers day. We were walking in the Peak District. As everyone else got up and continued the walk I remained lying down in the long grass enjoying the sunshine and the feeling of just being. I was unaware of the concern I caused as the rest of the family were searching for me. So, this litle memory has become a series of prints.

I started by using the Gelli plate to create a background of grasses. Using Caligo inks, watersoluble.

Then continued to monoprint draw the small shoes on top.Using watersoluble lino block printing in that has been left overnight to almost dry, drawing blind on the reverse of the paper to pick up the line in ink. I like this technique as it gives a line that cannot be achieved any other way and creates a freshness and immediacy to the drawing.

I then diverged from printmaking and used a handpainting technique with an acrylic paint mixed with an extender to create a light almost transparent layer to fill the shoes. These techniques really only worked on finer layout paper as so I was unhappy with the result at first as I tried it on Japanese Kozo paper. The Kozo paper was unable to pick up the monoprinted drawing. I completed the edition on layout paper for the 20 20 exhibition. (One problem being that the paper was not very robust for the way they display the images, just using bulldog clips. Something I have learnt to change for next year) I had already made the backgrounds on Kozo paper so I created another edition on the same theme, this time creating a simple lino cut for the top layer and ommitted the monoprint drawing.

I have made some similar prints using monoprinting techniques on the same theme. This time creating an opaque hand painted layer to infill the white socks. These are slightly different as they depict ater experiences at school when asked to stand up and answer a maths question. The shoes are roughly drawn to represent the awkwardness of the child. Socks unevenly pulled up feet maybe turned in.

Some of these images are available for sale from my space on the website for Yor Mill Craft Shop and Gallery. www.yoremillcraftshopandgallery.co.uk Thanks for reading the blog Julie

Summer 2023 Exhibition

Childhood Memories at Yore Mill Craft Shop and Gallery For August I presented the work I had previously shown at The Bank in North Shields plus some other paintings that I had been developing on the same idea. I was able to clear the studio out and hand the large images that I had previously shown, this time I applied them to wooden stretchers so they would hang against an MDF screen we put up to mask my shelves.

This painting came about due to a memory of the shoes we all wore in the 60's and 70's. My Mum was a shoe fitter for Clarks and StartRite so it was a point of pride that we were all kitted out correctly at the start of the school year. Old family photographs show myself and my sisters all in these, either red or blue. My friend recently had to help an elderly relative clear out a house and a pair of these were found, she gave them to me because she knew I would do something with them. So I had painted them as still life. I like the off centre positioning of the shoes as I was trying to depict a feeling of discomfort and self concsiousness that I felt as a child. The marble just balances the composition out and refers to a particular event when I fought (and won) physically with a boy in the school playground to regain my marbles when I thought he had won unfairly. The shoes kind of represent my self at that stage of my life and are a stand in for a self portrait I suppose. The little shoes painting was just quickly painted in oils on board. I have been enjoying working with oil paint again and find it more satisfying that acrylics. I like that the paint stays open for longer and can be blended for longer.

This painting I titled StartemRite. It depicts a pair of vintage childrens shoes with their original box. Again representing the self as a child. I painted this as a straight still life but from a dark ground so the overall impression is of objects emerging from a dark place. In the background is visible a leather belt which is partially obscured by the shadows. I hope to represent some of the tension that existed in my childhood of the constant threat of physical punishment whilst at the same time keeping up the appearances of a happy and prosperous family life.

This painting, I called Holy Grail, depicts (again using still life observation) a vintage cut glass cookie jar. It belonged to my paternal grandfather who was very dear to us as children. The cookie jar represents himself. We would be allowed to have a chocolate biscuit at Christmas from the cookie jar. I can't look at the actual jar without seeing my sisters hands going into the jar first to retrieve a cookie, the anxiety is still real today! I must admit it was a challenge to paint. I didn't use any tracing methods or projection but it is mostly drawn by just using the brush. I limited the palette and really painted more or less monochromatically just trying to depict shadows and highlights. Eventually the marks I was making with the brush came together in a kind of approximation of the light glinting off the cut glass surface and the chocolatey darkness distorted within. The biscuit that I could get that was the closest were Foxs full chocolate shortbreads. I had good feedback from the public about the exhibition as I also showed alongside the pictures some vintage artefacts such as the shoes, Pelham Puppets, a Spacehopper, a tin robot toy and some vintage magazines. The children were allowed to play with the puppets and toys. We had some interesting discussions about how childrens toys, the gendering of toys i.e what was acceptable to play with being a boy or a girl. With adults the shoes were a good starting point for discussion as most Gen X visitors remembered wearing the sandals in some way when they were young. There was general concensus that they were a good leveller in that we had no choice and in one way, it made us all the same in the playground

Home Sweet Home, Exhibition

 HOME SWEET HOME

Solo exhibition

at The Bank, Beacon Centre North Shields.

The space is an old branch of a bank shopfront, all the fittings and fixtures have been removed and the floor covering has been lifted to reveal a distressed concrete surface. The window is large and open and can be seen prominently when people enter the indoor shopping area. There is a communal space outside that is arranged like a village green although due to Covid people are not encouraged to congregate and it is now separated by a one way system. As people enter the indoor shopping area they are corralled towards The Bank front window.

The Bank, The Beacon Centre, North Shields

During the Covid 19 lockdown 2020, I started drawing and painting puppets and toys from my childhood. I wanted to evoke feelings and emotions from childhood and relate them to adult relationships. Lockdown has been a different experience for everyone and I am so happy that I had the studio space to go to. But the images have surfaced due to some degree of introspection due to our enforced isolation.

I started painting the female Pelham puppet, The little Dutch Girl. I have depicted the puppet in a position that suggests that it has been dropped by a child after having played with it. The position of the puppet suggests despair and sadness in collapse. I prepared a substrate of recycled calico and vintage fabrics using wax to capture the fabrics and bond them together.

The vintage fabrics evoke a feeling of home life and simple pleasures like embroidered details but the surface is distressed and worn. I enjoyed the sensation of applying oil paint to the wax surface and my art is always about surface in some way but the tactile pleasure that I get out of merely applying the paint also evokes childhood and and a sense of absorption in an activity that children can experience.

Little Dutch Girl, Pelham, Oil on unstretched canvas

I paired the Little Dutch Girl with the male Urchin and depicted it in a similar pose. The painted expression on his face remains the same whatever his body expresses. the fixed smile can be read in more than one way. To me, this depicts experiences from my childhood where, when hurt physically by bullies I continued to smile and refused to show the pain that was being endured. It was my way of standing up to the bullies by not letting it show that I had felt anything. It also evokes an experience I had of being hit by my father and by teachers. When very young the feeling that I had done something well was always rewarded by physical pain and I think this has affected my self confidence in adulthood with feelings of failure.

Pelham Urchin, Oil on unstretched canvas

The hanging pieces I decided to hang from a beam that runs down the centre of the space. The beam boxes in electrical cables but is open at the top. I made hooks from steel rod that I stitched onto the side of the calico on the large unstretched canvas. 

View through the window

View from the door

These larger canvases, I also treated with a wax, as I used the wax to absorb into the calico and fuse the vintage fabrics onto the calico. The subjects of these images can be seen on one level as still lives. The Robot toy image 'Sorry Not Sorry' was in response to the figure of the robot but also the broken Pelham Mother Dragon toy. The robot represents for me the idea of gendered toys, this was something I wanted but could never have because I was the wrong gender, but also the idea of a male presence that may be controlling in a relationship.

I wanted to express the feelings of desire that children can have about a certain item. Those feelings of desire are the same that an adult feels but the object may have changed. The emotions are just as strong and as wilful.

Don't Touch, Oil on unstretched canvas

The porcelain doll I chose to depict as an expression of childhood instructions "Don't Touch" but this obviously has, she is broken. Will we be found out? As a child this kind of thing was always seen as old fashioned and strangely feminine in old auntie's houses. I never aspired to this type of femininity and found it alien, still do.

The egg painting was done rather quickly as I had worked out an easier way to prepare the canvas with the wax capture. The substrate was created and left unprimed before painting directly with oil paints onto  the surface.

This piece is titled 'All I ever wanted' representing the fragility of mental health and the reversal or parental/child relationships. The egg is a comforting food but in this case has not been prepared correctly by the child for the parent. The egg can also represent the feminine and the mother figure. In this case broken through poor mental health.

This piece has come about through an inner dialogue during lockdown of my relationship with my mother and how the roles have recently been reversed as she has been suffering with dementia. She still asks me to boil her an egg! I think it represents a time for her when maybe she was cared for or when she felt happy.

All I Ever Wanted, Oil on unstretched canvas

The double puppet painting is more traditionally prepared on a stretched canvas substrate. I had used a black gesso to prime the canvas and enjoyed working away from the dark ground.

The double depiction of the toys I want to start the feeling of a dialogue between the two and create a narrative of what has happened between or to them. This one is titled 'It can be our Secret'. I have observed children talking through their toys and felt that it is a powerful medium for children to express themselves in ways that would be more difficult face to face.

It Can Be Our Secret, Oil on canvas

The nest painting is one of a series of studies of a nest that I found in my garden. I had to move it as it was not in a safe place for the birds to be raised. I of course allowed the brood to fledge and for the nest to be abandoned before moving it. When I did I found a single unhatched blackbirds egg inside. I felt a sense of wonder and delight with this simple finding.

The painting is again on unstretched cotton, this time the cotton had been treated first with a mixture of clay and lavender cuttings which was all captured with a layer of wax again before painting on with oil paints. A multi sensory one, this, as the lavender oils were released as I was working on the surface.

Nest, Oil on unstretched cotton

The roses painting, 'They were for you' is about a bouquet of roses from the garden that I had planned to take to my primary teacher as a gift unfortunately on the way to school they fell out of my hand one by one and what I actually presented to my teacher was an empty twist of tinfoil. Oh! the shame and embarrassment ! I can still feel it to this day.

This is simply painted with acrylic onto unstretched cotton using some collage of vintage fabrics. I merely primed with transparent gesso and this time did not use the wax.

They were for you, Acrylic on unstretched cotton

The Bank has a deep window revetment which I used to display the titles to the paintings and I placed some smaller works on paper there too, studies of the male Urchin puppet. They maybe weren't in the best position for display but served to catch people's eyes as they passed the shop front.

Pelham studies, Little Urchin, Acrylic on paper

On the whole I feel it has been a successful exhibition as I have tried to make the best of things in the Lockdown times where there is limited footfall through the shopping centre. There have been quite a few people who have stopped to look but also I have been able to have socially distanced private views where I am able to arrange with other building users so there is not a clash of people moving through the space. I have have some interesting feedback and conversations with my guests and actually it has been a nice way of doing it as at an opening night you don't always get to talk to everyone.

It has been a special time to get to grips with my own practice. I feel as though I am teaching myself to paint. I am allowing myself the freedom to express stories and narratives from my childhood at the same time working through issues of my present relationships. Like the children talking through their toys.

I am not sure where this is going to take me, but I plan to just go with the flow and find out

Big Robot painting

Recently completed large painting. 

This is part of a series of paintings to do with childhood memories and feelings.

It is painted in oils on unstretched canvas that has been treated with a surface of wax and fabric collage.

Painted in oils on unstretched calico

a detail before completion

painted on the floor of the studio

Girona Door Knockers

A recent trip to Girona inspired me to paint some of the door knockers that I have collected photos of.

It was a different way of working after using a lot of colour, here I am mainly working in monochrome, but again trompe l'oeil surfaces and working quite fast.

Girona Door Knocker. Acrylic on board

Detail

Detail

Door Knocker, Girona. Acrylic on Canvas

Door, Girona. Acrylic on canvas

Amble fishing boats

Amble Fishing Boats

Painted sketches in response to the fishing boats at Amble. 
The boats are in dry storage whilst being worked on, raised up on blocks and trailers. Revealing their forms and volume.
All the textures and weathering to be seen against the forms and colours.
I have enjoyed working on textured surface, keeping as much of the underpainting as possible as I build up the layers.

Rudder, Acrylic on paper collage

Cutaway, Acrylic on paper collage

The square cutaway has over time become the shape it needs to be through repetition, erosion and corrosion.

Cutaway detail

Recent Acrylic painting

Rust, Acrylic on monoprint

Detail

I have been working on the theme of eroded and decaying surfaces for some time now and I have been enjoying using colour and mark-making.

The images are taken from photos that I have mostly taken myself whilst walking but sometimes just from the Internet. The kind of things that catch my eye are eroded paint surfaces, rich textures and painted woodwork.

I like to work onto a ready dragged surface sometimes of arbitrary colours while I work over with transparent glazes or opaque layers. I also find I enjoy working onto surfaces that have been collaged from a few previously dragged pieces of paper as I make selections of the areas that I respond to or as they relate to the subject I am focusing on.

Although the subject may be flat and without perspective, I am creating physical depth with the layers of paint, colour and texture and I suppose, a level of trompe l'oeil with the colour. The act of painting is important to me, the tactile sensation of applying paint and building up layers of mark making.

The images in this selection are all on paper that has been previously dragged with acrylic paint, torn and collaged, or monoprinted onto first.

 Barred acrylic on paper collage

Prow, Acrylic on paper collage

Slider plate, acrylic on paper collage

Folded, Acrylic on paper collage

Folded, Detail

Hinge, Acrylic on Monoprinted paper

Hinge, detail