Postcards from the Northpole

coloured prints

I've been working a few new smaller prints recently and will post them over the next weeks. These are slightly different from my usual work in that they are more colourful. I hope you like them and make comments. These prints are from drypoint (scratched) plates where several different identically sized plates are printed onto the paper one on top of the other in sequence, each plate providing its own colour. Traditionally with the more normal metal plates one complication with this technique is that its tricky to ensure the images register exactly. I use a transparent polycarbonate plate material which means they can simply be placed on top of each other with all layers visible. I'm making these prints in small exclusive limited editions of only 5 or 10 so they will sell out much faster than my larger edition work.

Your new friend.

Sorry I havent been posting as frequently as I have in the past. I've been busy with another new medium ; clay. I shall keep posting images of sculptural work as well as new prints and paintings as they are made. This is a recent print which is really a cheats mezzotint, Rather that using the traditional and extremely laborious method of preparing the plate with a mezzotint rocker I have used a small "mezzotint type" roller to produce an equally rich and lovely black printing area that is then reworked by scraping and mostly burnishing the copper surface to pull whites and mid-tones out from the black.

Visit South London this weekend.

Telegraph Hill Open Studio, March 21 and 22

Please come along this weekend to see my work and my studio where I make my work. We're opening our house to display my wifes wonderful photographs and my prints. Also this year I'll have a lot more new works in different media such as ceramics, painting and digital prints. Come to view or to buy. There is a lot on in the area all week so check out the Telegraph Hill Festival website and print out this flyer here which includes a list of other artists all taking part too. Opening times are 2 till 6 both days.

repair pod

re-pollution system

Halloween Witch for Aeron Alfrey

I have a great e-friend whose blog is well worth visiting if you like creatures and beings weird and wonderful. Its called Monsterbains and is listed in the side bar just here and has a huge back archive of superb material including some of Aerons own work. Myself and some other artists were asked to produce images to post especially for the Halloween period just passed on the theme of Witches. Here is an artists proof (in other words the printing plate is still not totally finished) of my work. Legend has it that those people who were real witches were sometimes great drug takers and this is the inspiration for my latest print.

What......is that a painting!!

I'm posting an image of a work on a theme that has fascinated me for years now. Living in South London as I do there is the ever present sight of aeroplanes passing over on their way to land at Heathrow Airport. Almost one per minute in fact Far from disliking them they have worked their way into my psyche and I have become slightly obsessed with them and eventually this is becoming apparent in some of my artwork. This is the first painting of mine I've put on this blog. I've been painting more lately hence the lack of recent posts of etchings. No fear though more work is in the pipeline.

Snowmen

Here's another in a recent series of prints on a snowy theme utilising the high contrast achievable with this technique, as described below. This is a re-working of a similar image I posted a while back. If you're new to this blog then you may wish to see archived older posts of my work by clicking on the links in the side-bar.

Lost

This is another carborundum print made as described in the post below.

Carborundum

Carborundum is the naturally occurring mineral silicon carbide that has the beneficial property of being extremely tough. In a printing studio its often found as an abrasive used to grind lithographic stones flat. One other use however is to simply mix it with PVA glue or acrylic paint and apply it directly to any robust plate material. The carborundum areas will hold ink beautifully and give fantastic texture. Its particularly useful for colour printing where several plates each inked in a different colour and printed together.

I'm posting a few prints where I painted carborundum onto a perspex plate. The perspex areas can be wiped totally clean if desired and the carborundum areas left full of ink to give a nice high contrast image.

No longer a smoker........

This little image was made some time back now an falls into the category of my work that I'd describe as miscellaneous or oddities. I did in fact make the print when I was trying for the manyeth time to give up the evil weed. If you have no idea what I look like and I'm sure thats the case for millions of you out there then this will give you a bit of a clue. Not a self portrait but something of likeness of myself or at least as I was then some 15 years ago ,,,I'm proud to say though that I am no longer a smoker. hooooray

Figures from the deep

These two prints are made using a commonly seen etching technique employed to create tone called aquatint. I paint acid directly onto an aquatint prepared plate to build a dark deep image and then add structure with linear work aswell as gradually revealing form out of the black tone by scraping and burnishing away the etched surface. The resulting image is rather like to more involved mezzotint process but far easier to acheive.

In Tribute to George A. Romero

Chiroptera

Drawn of the Dead

This is a large drypoint print drawn on a perspex plate. This series of large 50x60 cm images on perpsex, some of which have been posted in the past on my blog here are tricky to print and relatively quick to wear down and so are limited to editions of 5 or 10 only. All my work is available for purchase. If you want to contact me about prices then click on the my profile bit at the top to get my e-mail address.

A Tribute to Patrick Troughton

A while back I developed a way of producing images on printing plates which like this example resemble a photograph to some degree. The soft edges and gradual changes of tone are made with traditional aquatint; the difference is in the way the aquatint dust is applied to the plate. A carefully made mask of thin card is cut out and suspended above the surface of the piece of metal before it is placed inside the aquatint box. The dust falls through the holes in the mask and is deposited on the plate (subsequently to be etched through) but because the "image" (the cut out holes in the mask) is raised about 5 to 10 mm above the plate the the dust scatters and spreads slightly around the edges avoiding the usual hard edge quality that would normally occur with aquatint.

Telegraph Hill Open Studio, March 8th and 9th 2008

Visit my Studio.

I shall be opening up my studio which is in my house soon as part of a local Arts Festival. On March 8th and 9th 2008 from 2 to 6pm all are welcome to come and see my work and space. I'll be exhibiting work throughout the house aswell and this will include other things not really shown on this blog so today I'm posting images of some sculptural and digital pieces. There are lots of other local artists taking part all within a short walk of each other dotted around Telegraph Hill in South London England so why not visit several. For more details simply Google "telegraph hill festival" to see this and other events,,for a map of participants check out "venues".

Twisted and Distorted

As time goes by I get to understand more and more about the threads of connectivity that run through my work. A lot of the printed scenes I create almost make themselves with the subject and detail revealing itself to me as the image is built. Almost always something is not quite right, something is distorted or erksome, something is there to be discovered to encourage one to reflect on ones own nature and being.

Freeze

Heres a large image I made for my Body Prints Exhbition in London about this time a year back now but havent posted before. It it part of a series of cold/snow works that are a bit different from my usual highly detailed relying more on empty space to make up the image. They are drypoints drawn on large pieces of perspex and are limited to a very small edition of only 5 plus one artists proof. I only have a few of these left for purchase but please do enquire about this or any other prints in you're interested in owning one.

A world full of mad people....

Here are some prints I made a while back now depicting a sort of imagined hybrid mediaeval world full of odd charatcters. More of these to come soon.

More Exquisite Corpses

Three hundred and thirty-six combinations

Here are a few of the exquisite corpse prints that I have printed up so far. I believe my maths is right in calculating that there are 336 different creatures ...so far possible. The series is not finished yet. I'm already working on the next batch of beings beyond the eight so far. Another four will push the number of creatures up to a staggering 1320 different prints. This is obviously going to cause me some editioning and catalogueing nightmares but worth it I think as the prints have come out really well.

All welcome this Sunday Nov. 18th 2007.Open House Exhibition

I'm having an open house exhibition this coming Sunday November the 18th in my house in South London. A lot of my work will be on the wall for sale and much more in browsers to peruse and hopefully buy. I'll be selling some of my small scale sculptures too; some of the things I dont really show on my blog here. I'm sharing the space with another local artist Elizabeth Cook who works in textiles. If your interested in coming along the opening hours are from 3 to 8 so please e-mail my for fuller details. You can find my e-mail address in the profile section of the blog just at the top.

Exquisite destruction

This posting is an image of the latest print in a series of etchings I'm preparing for my Exquisite Corpse edition. I now have eight carefully composed characters ready. If your not sure what this is please look a little further down for fuller details under posting "consequences". I'm printing only a very limited number of the individual complete plates (like the giant robot here) before the process of chopping and recomposing plates begins... I'm not much of a mathematician but I reckon the number of possible creature combinations must be very high.

What to do with old perspex......

I used to work somewhere where perspex was used as a glazing material for framed pictures. One of the problems of using perspex is that it scratches very easily and the scratches are virtually impossible to remove once theyre there. Fortunately those very properties make it a great material for use as a printing plate. Any sharp tool will create a line that will hold ink beautifully. Here are a few large quick life-drawings using perspex in this way. For any printmakers keen on this drypoint technique I suggest a thinner and more user friendly alternative material called Makrolon polycarbonate (1mm is a good thickness) made by Amari plastics.

Crocodile specimen and chained Yeti.

This is the next print I've made and printed up today for the Exquisite corpse series ( see the next two posts below for fuller details). So far I've been etching two individual creatures on the one copper plate which wll be halved and then chopped again.

Consequences

I couldnt wait to see how some of the creatures from my "consequences" or "exquisite corpse" print series might look so I have scanned, digitally cropped and re-assembled some of the finished prints to produce the mock-up above. I'm really excited about these and soon will make real prints in limited editions of some of the the huge number of possible weird beings. The idea is that each of the creatures ( like "Batman" below) is drawn and etched on copper in the normal way, then the plates are chopped into three sections and these parts re-assembled with parts from other plates and printed as a whole.

Batman, sliced in three!

I'm currently working on a series of printing plates of various characters with the intention that when complete the plates will be chopped up then creating oddly mixed up beings comprising their randomly re-assembled head, body and legs elements. This isnt a new idea ; it is of course the old classic drawing game that I love still to do that I know as "exquisite corpse", usually done on folded paper which is passed to the next participant. I'm expecting that this series could continue to develope for years as new characters are drawn each time adding to the possible permuatations.

Diverse Divers

The favourite theme of divers continues.

McKenzie clothes?

Imminent Death

This title is only a working title at the moment. Sometimes it takes me a while before I decide on what a work should finally be called. Its another drypoint print and depicts a man deep in the sea.

Drypoint on aluminium

Here is the second in this series of five large prints made on aluminium. Please dont forget that virtually all the work on the site is available for purchase.

A free-diver

I'm posting one of a series of large prints I've been working on latley. In these I've returned to some favourite subjects of water and divers, breathe and death. These recent works are drypoints where the plate is simply made by scratching directly into aluminium which I find one of the best metals for this process. In this instance the beautifully scuffed and damaged metal sheets came from a skip.

Four Figures

Rejected by the Royal Academy.

I recently submitted a small print to a prestigious UK open entry art exhibition in England, The RA Summer Exhibition. Unfortunately despite success in previous years they rejected my "five Warriors two Beetles and a Frog". I'm posting it today so viewers can see it and feel free to leave comments and also to offer an oportunity to buy it outside the exhibition.

A Book about Belief

.........

I have recently finished a series of 6 small etchings which are compiled to make an artists book. The Book is called "some things unseen" and is currently viewable as part of an exhibiton along with some 20 or so other artists books in a superb London bookshop called Crockatt and Powell in Lower Marsh near Waterloo station. The book is editioned 50 copies and sells for £40. There are many links and messages to be fathomed for the careful reader.

What an odd chap.

transformation and sleep

Here are three large drypoint prints based on the theme of pupation and transformation from one state to another. These were made specifically for my recent Body Prints exhibition in London. Such large drypoints made on perspex plates are difficult to print and the plates deteriorate quickly so works like these are limited to an edition of only 5.

The beauty of zombification

I've got a bit of a thing about zombies at the moment. Regular visitors to the blog will see how they can fit in with my body of work... themes of strange distortions and aberation from the norm are my sort of thing. These three chaps are prints made using a lithographic ink called touche painted onto a zinc plate. With a little bit of encouragement and follow up etching this material naturally creates intricate beautiful detail which I have subverted to create these horrific undead. Hopefully the detail can be seen if you look closely.

Kinder Eggs

I used to avidly buy and collect small childrens chocolate eggs that contained a construction toy. Half the joy of these (the chocolate usually went into the bin) was the little instruction sheet showing how the toy should be assembled. Here are a couple of prints on that theme, instruction sheets for my own objects.

A Beast

Make up your own story.

Beings from Dreams

The Mad Professor

A collection of odd bones

This is a series of small drypoint prints. I have a large collection of skulls and bones; often things I've found whilst beach-combing on the Thames foreshore in London. These prints are more in the vein of being studies and distortions of real bones. They are made using two separate identically sized plates to provide line and colour.

Fantastical Headwear

A bit like the demons in the last post, the helmets and headwear in this image are not exact copies of the authentic article but my own version drawn from inspiring images and texts that i love.

Army of Demons

Heres a print I did after returning from a holiday in India..What an amazing experience that was! Such fantastic religious imagery everywhere!!

Strange goings on

Heres a post in honour of the recent beautiful full moon. Please do leave comments and contact me if your interested in knowing more about my work or wish to purchase prints.

Mystery objects

Whilst going through a stack of prints recently I came across a long forgotten work that caught my attention. It is part of a small series of images I made a long time back. Ocassionally whilst watching a film I'd notice a brief intriguing glimpse of a picture or photo or paitning or suchlike on the wall of the film set. Usually these images are very blurred and brief and this series of works was about filling in the gaps and re-interpreting what the image might have been with of course the added influence of my particular slant. "video image" is such a work. Along similar lines "snowscene" is a work from my recent exhibition where its up to the viewer to use their own experience to determine exactly what is going on and what the shapes mean.

A cold winter?

I'll be starting up regular postings of old and new work again now that the massive enterprise of a recent solo exhibition is over. Today two works made especially for that show which was split into two themes of snow and transformation. A lot of the new works in the show were on a much larger scale than most of my usual print output. These are two examples of those bigger works; both drypoints printed from perspex printing plates.

London Exhibiton 14th December 2007

London Exhibiton 14th December 2007

I'm posting news of my imminent first London Solo show here. I've been working hard lately making lots of new works, some on a much larger scale than my usuual work for an exhibiton at the Sassoon Gallery London SE15. Please see above for fuller details. There are some new works here too which I hope you will enjoy and comment on. Its a new subject matter, rotten figures, and what I hope to achieve is to depict a horrific subject with beautiful and delicate line and tone.

Beekeepers

The Letter

I'm often asked what the full story is in the images I make; whats going on? I never fully answer as I like the viewers to determine for themselves, and reveal to themselves something of their own deeper nature.

Centrifuge

Hairy Daniel

Heres a little drypoint print, drawn from life of an old friend called Daniel Collings. Theres been a nice lot of comments from new viewers lately...Its always great to recieve feedback so thanks to you all.

Odd Clothing

Nunhead

Beings from Dreams

Today I'm posting three prints from many I have made in this series. The printing plates are made in a way similar to the well known Rorschach inkblots. There is a large amount of random influence in the way the plates and prints are made but I try to rend some level of control over these forces. I find it is the asymmetrical elements however which give life to the creature, rather as in the biology of Nature.

Vauxhall

I used to work near Vauxhall Bridge in London and this print is my version of a particular spot near that bridge. In a lot of my work I like to use hats to repesent the status or mental state of people. Moustaches and beards having meanings too.

Apparition

This is one of a series of prints I made a while back of strange imagined events occuring in some of my regular haunts. Theres also an element here of confusion about whether people see what others see in the same space or situation.

Soft body hard body

Protective clothing 2

This is a new print and I'm sure regular visitors who are getting to know my work will see how it fits in with some of my recurrent themes. Stay tuned for more posts soon.

more interesting headwear

This is a recent drypoint print. The subject matter is intentionally paradoxical in that the scene is full of soldiers who are not fighting but enjoying a good old dance. For those interested in technique; this one was drawn or rather scratched with a needle onto perspex which makes an excellent surface from which to make prints. Unlike with a metal plate though mistakes cannot be erased. The second image here is another printing technique using carborundum powders, board and glue. This is the first print using this technique I've posted and as you can see its great for achieving full rich black areas aswell and nice tone.

Anatomy

Those of you who regularly check in to see my Blog might appreciate that I have a great love and interest in anatomy. Some of the most wonderful early anatomical engravings were produced by a chap called Pietro De Cortona. Todays posting is an etching of mine of him, appropriately dissected.
My thanks to all you regular viewers out there who leave comments or contact by e-mail to chat or arrange purchasing work. I'm always working on new things and still have much to post for the future. If you're new to this Blog or not familiar with the way things are archived automatically by Blogger and want to see more dont forget to look at the "archives" near the top of the page.

Stranger Heads

Strange Heads

Here are two older prints of mine...the comical duos of talking heads, and one more recent print of an imagimary chap with a fantastical helmet. I have quite a lot of works of people wearing such headgear and am working on a large print at the moment of a hoard of happy dancing soldiers.

Beekeeper

Strange Anatomies

Drawing from Life

A lot of my more imaginative work is drawn directly onto the printing plate with minimal pre-drawing and then evolves as the drawing progresses. Although a very different discipline this way of creating images benefits from my love of drawing from a live model. I've posted some details of life drawings today. These are very quick sketches scratched out in less than a minute, some times much faster. The Dynamic Man is a very old plate that I have recently "re-visited" and enjoyed printing up again and is a sort of hybrid between a life drawing and a worked plate. This is one of the great things about printing ie. that I can still print and sell work made many years ago, if its any good.

Perils of swimming

Here are two new prints of swimmers. In fact the same swimmer at two different times. They are "drypoints" made by scratching the image onto aluminium sheet. This gives a really lovely rich inky image when the plate is wiped carefully.

Ancient Ocean

Death and kindness

Trouble at Sea

I'm posting some images of sailors; three from many I've made relating to the sea. These dark images are aquatints and are made by drawing (or more properly scraping) out white from a black printing plate.

Protective Clothing

A lot of my artwork depicts people in protective clothing. Two common characters are a bee-keeper and the diver. As my artwork developes I'm coming to understand more and more myself that this other worldly charcater who appears almost without my intending it represents myself and my thoughts about what it is to be a human in the universe.

Visions

A while back I made a series of artworks depicting my local haunts but peopled with apparitions. I'm working on some similar images in digital format that'll appear quite different in style but I hope be equally intriguing.

3 Penises

Here are three more prints along similar lines to the Animlcules. One of the objects in "three penises" is the organ of a sea urchin. The other two are imagined items. The Seven Virus print is typical of some of my work where I achieve intricate detail; using a pin to draw through very thin etching grounds and bite into copper plate. The detail is sadly not fully apparent via the blog images.

Animalcules

Ive produced several prints entitled animalcules. The term was used by the 17th-century discoverer of microorganisms, Anton van Leeuwenhoek, and refers to creatures so small they are like molecules. My animalcules are purely imagined beings. I love the 18thC. lithographs of Ernst Haekel who was known to take a bit of artistic license when depicting some of the wonderous creatues in his vast output.

Death and Transformation

Here are three relatively recent prints all dealing with bodily states. The moth is newly born as a changed being but in a state where its still unfurling wings are not capable of flight. Don Quixote is in a state of mummification and in the third image, the bee-keepers' situation is unclear, perhaps in a dreamworldsomewhere between the two.

1000 and 1 creatures

This work, Yukon Trail, was drawn and printed printed today. Its the next in a new series of images based on people in adverse environments. The rich black tone is typical of the drypoint technique mentioned in the "new and old" post below. Also above I'm posting an image and a close-up of the most detailed print I've made. Unusually in this one there are no humans, just a miriad of (1001 in fact) creatures.

New and Old

One of the techniques I love to use most of all in printing is something called drypoint. This is the simplest of all ways of making a plate from which multiple images can be printed. It is simple because all it involves is scratching an appropriately soft material such as a piece of aluminium or perspex. The scratch and burr hold ink to give a particularly rich line. This is my preferred medium for sponateous work like life drawing but I have lately been using it for more composed imagined scenes such as one I'll post later today as soon as I have scanned it. Plates made in this way are rather delicate and wear out very quickly and are limited to small editions. The life drawing here is an old drypoint print and the other image is my very latest work.

Mezzotints

Poor Mermaid and Footballers

Horror and Humour

Something that I really enjoy observing when people look through my art work is that they may laugh at one image and then are aghast at the next. I have many diverse themes in my imagery but for me there are threads that bind and link them all. There is a character who appears in varied guises in many works and has been appearing for years. He is the diver; now transmuting into a bee-keeper and more lately the arctic explorer. A lot of the images where this figure appears deal with my feelings of the how humans relate to the world beyond the limits of their body. I've posted an image drawn and printed only today; it has a working title at the moment. A lot of the titles I give my work take a long time to be decided upon and sometimes change over time as fresh prints are produced from the plate. I hope to allow the viewers own consciousness to determine the true meaning of an image; to not be mis-directed by my title and in a very minor way perhaps lead the viewer to question or even understand themselves a little better through the process.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog. I intend to use this space to showcase my artwork and invite comments on the themes and ideas they invoke. I've been making art using intaglio printmaking techniques mostly for over 20 years. I shall regularly update this site with old images that I still like aswell as new pieces or work in progress. I'm going to include titles and dimensions to give a better idea of what the real thing is like. In the future I'm hoping to include digital photographic art and possibly even some music to accompany your viewing experience but for now please take a look and feel free to contact me with any comments and thoughts.

.........

........