Here is my latest linocut, showing the interior of Balham Underground Station. It’s inside the north entrance at that point where you turn to go down into the ticket hall. This was a tricky subject, as I wrote in my last post, but I do like a challenge.
I’ve called it Gateway to the South, courtesy of Peter Sellers….
First, the working drawing…..
Then a spot of cutting…..
Inking up the first block…..
More cutting, this time it’s the second block……
Second block now printed – and (I suspect you may be ahead of me here) yet more cutting….
Three of the four blocks now cut…..
The third block is printed – some proofs to agonize over pointlessly….
Tools at the ready, fourth block awaiting – and yet more cutting, sigh…
Fourth block printed and none of the proofs look quite right. Time to cut and paste….
So I’m going back to the beginning – first block printed again, with some adjustments.
And there you have it – three weeks of my life that I’m never going to get back……
I once had a conversation with a printmaker, some years older than me, whilst we were both invigilating a group show in a gallery somewhere. We were chatting away, as one does, when she made a remark that has stuck with me. She said she wished she’d done more to promote her work and taken advantage of more opportunities. “Too late now” she said. And to be honest I guess it was a bit – she was probably in her late seventies at that time.
Anyway, I’ve always remembered that wistfulness in her voice and it’s become one of the things I say to myself, when I need a bit of a kick up the proverbial.
Mostly, life as an artist is pretty mundane, routine-driven. You get up, drive to the studio, make some work, send out an order or two, have several cups of tea, chat a lot.
Then suddenly a new gallery rings up offering a show, or you’re asked to submit a proposal for a new commission, beyond your current experience.
A big opportunity like this can freak you out a little and it might be difficult to manage. Like a small business suddenly getting a big order, there are the logistics of it to consider – producing the work, pricing it suitably, delivering it and invoicing for it.
No wonder your brain gets a bit fried and your capacity to cope has a wobble. But seriously, I’ve lost count of the times I’ve heard fellow artists say they can’t do something. Their default position is to dither and prevaricate – they haven’t enough time or experience, it’s too difficult, they’re going on holiday at the end of the month (seriously).
It’s easy to feel that a new opportunity might be beyond your capabilities as an artist, to feel overwhelmed. And obviously you don’t want to set yourself up to fail – you have to be realistic as to what you can manage but seriously, what’s the worst that could happen?
So you don’t quite get it right and the gallery gets eight new pieces instead of the ten they asked for? Well, doesn’t that just show your work is in demand? And that proposal you’ve sweated over is rejected – it just means it wasn’t right for the client – so what?
You just need to be ready to manage those extra sales, the new gallery or even that elusive lucky break. So how much energy do you have? How much stress can you handle? How can you tell, until you’ve tested yourself? And each time you take on a challenge, you learn how to set boundaries, to learn how much you can feasibly take on before meltdown occurs. (In any case, once it’s over you forget how stressful it was, until the next time..)
The point is that if you don’t go for it – if you put up too many obstacles and make too many excuses – you may not get the chance again and you’ll never know if you were able to rise to the challenge or not.
The times I’ve got through some new venture by the skin of my teeth but with the customer/client none the wiser, well it’s exhilarating. It can be a bit of a white knuckle ride sometimes but it’s a great feeling if you pull it off. And of course, other regular commitments might have suffered a bit but you can always catch up later…
So the trick is to try not to panic (this is possibly a bit rich coming from the Queen of Panic here). Just don’t be tempted to retreat back into the safety of the studio carefully avoiding getting involved with that sort of pressure again. That window of opportunity just passes you by – again and again until there are no more opportunities….
So just grab those chances and work out how to do it afterwards. Don’t be one of those artists that we’re all familiar with, the ones who say wistfully ‘I could have been a contender’.
If you can’t do any of these dates and would still be interested in coming along for a viewing, please make an appointment with the Curwen Gallery, by phoning 020 7323 4700 or by emailing [email protected].
In any case, I will be there for the Private View this Sunday afternoon (19th May 2-4pm). Please come along and say hello!
I’ve been in the studio on a Sunday, doing some last minute re-framing for our studio show at the
Rectory Gallery in Spitalfields. The van is coming at nine tomorrow – oh yes, there’s nothing like leaving it until the last minute…..
I have three Private Views coming up in the week ahead and the first is on tonight. The Royal Society of Painter Printmakers is holding their Annual Exhibition at Bankside Gallery. If you fancy looking at interesting prints with a glass of wine, then why not come along? It’s on from 6-8 tonight, right next to Tate Modern.
The other two are for a Half Moon Studio group show at the Rectory Gallery in Spitalfields – the first is on next Wednesday – but more on that later.
In the meantime, here is an earlier post of mine about PV’s:
Here is my new linocut of Bank Tube Station – just a snap taken on my phone at the studio – but you get the idea. I wanted to call it Little and Large – but I decided to be sensible and so I settled on Weekend Away….
The London Original Print Fair was at the Royal Academy this weekend and, as I was there doing a shift on one of the stands, I decided I might as well take some photos and possibly accompany them with some insightful and astute comments. There’s always a first time for everything.
So, I feel I started off quite well with this one – an acceptable view of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers stand. My linocut, Poetry of Departures, is shown top right.
There were some really good Edward Bawden linocuts on several of the stands, including my favourite – the one of Brighton Pier – priced at a cool £20,000. Unfortunately you can’t really see much – perhaps I should have got a bit closer.
And here is another Bawden, which I’d never seen before. This one is a poster for the Saffron Walden festival, of which there are only two in existence, the other being in the Fry Museum.
Again, this is not a great photo – those people appeared out of nowhere, I’m telling you.
So I had another go at it but this time I managed to cut the top off. Moving swiftly on…
Here we have a person looking through a browser and a nice view of a blue suited shoulder.
Here is a rather interesting set of ten prints, as seen through some sort of leaf sculpture.
And so, with a final flourish, here are some random people walking through a doorway – you can’t ask for more than that, can you?
I spent the last couple of days before the Easter break cleaning and tidying the studio. Well, it’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it.
After carefully looking around to make sure that nobody else was waiting patiently with mop and bucket at the ready, I had to assume that the person doing the cleaning was going to be me.
And doesn’t it all pile up? I have a perfectly good sized space to work in but somehow, while my back was turned, several hundred frames and several thousand sheets of paper and card muscled their way in. Well, I might be exaggerating a bit here (but not by much).
And then there’s all the rubbish – discarded proofs, empty ink tubes, dirty rags, lino clippings – oh dear, I really can’t go on.
Still, as I kept telling myself brightly, whilst covered from top to toe in dust and grime, it was definitely going to look fabulous when it was finished.
Funnily enough though, it all looks much the same as when I started. Why is that?
To my shock, and if I’m honest, some horror too, I realised that I’d started writing about the progress of this ‘new’ linocut nearly two months ago.
I got as far as talking about planning the print here, starting work on the first block here and posting a photo of pulling a proof of it here. I thought it was all going rather well.
Then I made the usual mistake of opening my plan chest drawer and casting an ever so slightly critical eye over my last editioned print, of Liverpool Street Station.
And yes, before I knew it, I was back to wrestling with the wretched thing – for what felt like at least a year but probably wasn’t…
Consequently it all went a bit quiet on the London Bridge Station front, until I finally managed to get back to working on it again.
And here’s the result – just need a title now….