This simple lino cut is my Christmas card design – a warm red jumper with holly motif. I love wool, woolly jumpers and knitting. As I have just resumed knitting a jumper which I started knitting over 6 years ago I was inspired to put a festive woolly on my Christmas card.
Festive Jumper
Cranes
I have been obsessed by the Dockyard cranes for some time. ‘Cranescape’ is one of my favourites. I have recently been working on an etching which combines the cranes with naval ships. ‘Daring’ is a work in progress – it has a long way to go. Etchings take time, there are many processes to go through (etching the line, aquatint, adding textures and so on) and you don’t know exactly what you are getting until you take it out of the acid and make a print. ‘Daring’ may have a number of reincarnations but i will get there – watch this space.
Rapt, an Edition.
I have just completed an edition of Linocut prints which I have decided to call ‘Rapt’. The image is based on a sculpture I saw at the annual exhibition in Chichester Cathedral Cloisters. The sculpture by Kate Denson and is entitled “Sun Day Worship”. It is of a young woman sitting on a bench, with one knee drawn to her chest. She seems to be lost in some sort of reverie; be it of sorrow, fancy or epiphany. She is alone with her thoughts and unaware of the world around.
The print is a lino from two blocks, printed on acid free Somerset 225 gsm paper. The edition is of eight prints. The print is on A3 sized paper and the printed area is about 20x14cm. On sale now at £30 unmounted.
Pink Pompey
Portsmouth is a very macho kind of town. All hairy knuckles and naval warfare, tattoos and booze. It’s almost as if there is something to hide. Something a little bit camp just waiting to come to the surface.
I have uploaded a bunch of new prints from 2010 into this gallery.
Sewing the Wind & Reaping the Whirlwind
Continuing my schoolboy morbid fascination with World War 2 and the horrors of mass bombing. In the Lancaster bomber, trapped in a searchlight, seven airmen face mortal peril. Down at ground level it’s no picnic either. The city is ablaze and the population is fleeing.
Extremists 2
I published this a while ago, around about the time of the European elections. Much to my surprise it was read (in as far as I could decipher the experimental punctuation) by a BNP person, who was kind enough to comment upon it. A timely reminder to me to post again and say to not fall for these people – they do not deserve your vote.
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Cyle Forum Logos
We’ve been trying to invent a new logo for the cycle forum. It’s been painful but at least it gave me a pattern to play with when I wanted to try some easy cut lino.
Jerry Takes a Pasting
I have reverted to 10 years old and made a print of a Lancaster bomber teaching the krauts a lesson. Or not actually. I think it’s actually being taught rather a difficult lesson. Being caught in a searchlight was a terrifying and often terminal experience for many young men in the 1940s. Aircrew in RAF bomber command had the worst survival prospects of any allied service in world war 2 – statistically death or capture was a certainty, with a one in 20 chance of being downed on a mission and 30 missions in a tour of duty. Survival was exceptional.
The fact that their heroic deeds were often of marginal military value and terrible moral value adds an awful pathos to their heroism. This picture is dedicated to their heroism in war and (for the survivors) herosim in living with the brickbats ever since.
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Back at Omega
Another good day at Omega Printmakers today. We are preparing for the November exhibition. I made yet more bikes. In fact this picture is the story of my life in bikes – my Autobikography.
The exhibition is at Portsmouth Central Library – more look on the Omega site for more info.
Ten:Ten
Firstly, let me say that I think that the 10:10 campaign to try to reduce the carbon we put into the atmosphere by 10% by 2010 is extremely laudable. I have even signed up to it.
However (there had to be one), a few weeks ago there was a centre spread in the guardian (other limp liberals may have seen it too) of lots of people holding up pink cards with their 10:10 pledges on. The pledges were things like “To smoke only 10 cigarettes a day” and “to waste less food” or “grow veg on the balcony”. This got me thinking. All these things were good, in as far as they went, but are things like that really enough to make the difference needed to keep planet earth habitable to humans?
Then I started to think about the sort of pledges that people could make that really would make a difference, the sort of thing that an individual could do that would really cut their emissions but might be a little uncomfortable (like dying) and started to play with images of them. There are only two so far, but here they are.
