Diary of a Journey

Strange how sometimes the plate is more communicative than the print.

Had some fun playing around with some images in monoprint.

Remembered that my maternal grandmother was born and spent the first thiteen years of her life in China. Her home had a number of Chinese silk scrols hanging on the walls. As a child I was fascinated by the pictures and Chinese script.

Got really bogged down today. Did a couple of monoprints and an etching. Enjoyed hand burnishing the monoprints, helped me to get closer to the image and it has more depth than if I’d put it through the press.

The etching is the first I’ve tried using a small amount of bi sulphate in the saline sulphate solution. It’s reduce the incidents of the ring of pearls effect and the natural aqua tint effect in the aluminium seems more stable. Need to do some more experiments with this brew.

Attended a great workshop’creative etching” yesterday at the Print Centre in Wrexham. It was run by Marcelle Hanselaar

http://www.marcellehanselaar.com/

Apart from being a master artist Marcelle is also a gifted teacher. What struck me most about the workshop was the silent engagement when people were working on their plates. There were also moments of sharing when people proofed their plates or when Marcelle introduce some new thoughts or techniques.

It’s probably too much of a generalisation but what struck me was the difference between a fine art studio and a print room; the studio tends to be a place of individual isolation, where as the print room tends towards being a community, a place of sharing. A workshop.

The way that the artist talking blog is set up feels to me more like a studio than a community. Going through the blogs very few people take advantage of the comments space and there’s no place to take any emerging discussion into a public forum.

Feel disappointed that I didn’t respond to something I read in another blog yesterday evening.

It said something like:

“corrupt politicians, corrupt bankers and corrupt reporters where are the corrupt artists?”

I tried to find the blog again this morning but was unable to locate it. Is there such a thing as non-corrupt art? Is all art corrupt in that it supports the spectacle?