Recent Works 2018

Recent works 2018

Heads, Reivaulx Abbey, Collagraph and soft pastel



Earlier in the year I did a project on iconoclasm, which took me in a number of different directions. One of those works, "Heads", Rievaulx Abbey (see above), a collagraph, was also chosen for the exhibition “Humber to the Wash”, which was open to artists living in the counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. This large collagraph arose from my visit to Rievaulx Abbey. Certain artefacts and sculptures had been rescued from the rubble following the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The above work represents three heads which I felt represented the culture and beliefs of the Middle Ages (fear of death, hell etc. and their fascination with creatures from other continents such as leopards and tigers). I also wanted to capture the mood of the place – quite eerie. Although monochrome, I do a number of works in colour. Such images illustrate how my ideas often arise from social, cultural and historical contexts, and recently I have explored complex relationships between art and spirituality.

 

 

 Rievaulx Abbey, Dissolution. Screenprint from collagraph.

This work started as a drawing which I developed into a collagraph. I then made a number of screen prints using the collagraph, adding colour to represent the act of iconoclasm, which I sought to depict rather like an apocalypse.  

Sculpture, St Peter’s Church, Barton upon Humber

This work in pastel is a composite drawing of sculptures I saw in an ancient local church, dating back to Anglo-Saxon times (part of my iconoclasm project). The faces were weird and sometimes grotesque, but definitely intriguing. Some of them are half human/half animal and others are “Green Men”. I went on from this to think about the topic and develop other works, such as the two shown below.

Watching. St Peter’s Church, Barton upon Humber, ink drawing and screenprint

 

Here I drew one of the animal heads from St Peter’s Church in black ink. I thought about how long the head had been there, and imagined him looking with his piercing eyes at everything that had gone over the years – smashing of stained glass windows, destruction of statues of etc.

 
Green Man, St Peter’s Church, Barton upon Humber, charcoal drawing with prints of leaves, made direct from nature.

I thought further about the Green Men in the church and what I felt they represented – roots and growth springing from their mouths and replenishing the earth’s cycle. I made a charcoal drawing of a particularly interesting Green Man and then collected a number of plants from around the area which I inked up and pressed onto small pieces of thin newsprint paper by hand, which I then stuck on the image. They signify real plants growing out of and falling from his mouth. The idea was to connect the Green Man direct with nature in a creative and thought- provoking way.

Thinking about time, made me look at my own garden and consider how I could depict the passage of time as a theme. I decided to record the growth of some sunflowers from a bud, through to flowering, to their demise in the autumn. I created a series of drypoint etchings of the flowers and the process of life and decay which I then made into an Artist's Book.

 
 

The above examples show how my practice has recently developed, and demonstrate some of my thought processes along the way. The meaning (if there is one) may be general at one level, but connect with larger narrative or textual, historical or other sources, or be symbolic. 

 

A Drypoint etching from my Artist's Book, the Story of the Sunflower