Finding My Joy
Pre-Covid lockdowns, I tried to attend printmaking workshops every year to improve my own printmaking skills and gain a fresh perspective.
Obviously this hasn’t happened for the last two years. I’ve experimented on my own and I believe the prints I produced during the last two years have been my amongst best. I’ve had lots of time in the studio to try different things, perfecting my skills and the techniques I’ve developed during that time.
There comes a time though when some fresh input is required to avoid stagnation. For that reason I applied for the summer sailing residency with Sail Britain led by Scottish artist, Ellis O’Connor. I’ve just paid the balance of my trip and booked my train ticket to Mallaig last week . I do hope I’m not going to come to regret it if the rail strikes continue into August! I may have a long drive!
In the run up I’ve been a bit impatient to be doing something different sooner. Back in April I stumbled across a free online abstract painting taster course with artist Louise Fletcher on social media. I signed up for it and then realised I was going to be away in Sicily for most of it. Bringing any art materials with me wasn’t possible this time with my daughter’s wedding being the primary focus of the trip.
I caught the tail end of the course when I got back and, long story short, on the basis of what I saw, I decide to sign up for the full course - four months of online content and access to the material for 12 months so I can revisit all the assignments throughout the year.
Mark making combining oils with watered down acrylic paints
A panel from a sheet that was sectioned off into six panels but painted as one sheet using inks, paints, oil pastels, charcoal.
The way Louise has structured the course resonated with me completely. As I would say to my own students when I was running my own workshops, we need to let go of our expectations to produce ‘absolutely fabulous’ work straight off the bat. You wouldn’t expect to be an expert doctor after one lesson so why do we have such high expectations to produce master pieces when we are starting a new creative venture? Everything takes practice!
The objective of the course is to focus on what brings me joy and concentrate on remembering how to play, experiment, try different materials, tools, mark making, etc. It’s about learn to tap into one’s feelings; notice what makes me happy and what makes me anxious, keep an art journal. The process has reminded me of what it was like when I first started printmaking. back then I had no expectations. I just wanted to have fun. Recently I felt I’ve lost sight of that.
Acrylic paint, Indian inks, dribbled on and blown about with a hair dryer
Indian ink, gesso, acrylic inks, oil pastels pencils
Acrylic paint, Indian ink, with extra layers added of acrylic inks, brushes, scraping back
Painted over a larger sheet with masked off areas
Acrylic paints with decorating brushes and lots of water
Painting emotion - whatever came to the surface - part of a very large sheet
These are some examples of the assignments I’ve been taking part in. Some of them are details of larger painted sheets of paper.
Painting emotion - the addition of the hints of blue seemed to change the dynamic and things became calmer
Each assignment is accompanied by a requirement to record what felt good and what felt uncomfortable and to delve deeper do unlock whatever is holding me back. It’s a real voyage of discovery and I can already feel the creative juices beginning to be re-invigorated and finding my joy again in art.
The image below was created by experimenting with my usual approach of creating layers of monotype colour - about three layers of ink went down onto paper first. I then tried something different where I painted acrylic paint onto a sheet of acetate that I scrapped and scratched into and then printed the wet paint on top of the earlier monotype layers and repeated the process with different colours along with some loose drawing with Indian ink, charcoal, oil pastels and crayons.
It’s no masterpiece but I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I can see the potential as I practice and hopefully get better at it.
Memories of St. Barr’s Chapel on The Isle of Barra
The memory of Saint Barr’s Chapel on the Isle of Barra was in my mind when I made the image above