here’s a couple of prints I’ve been playing with this evening. Its one movement of my youngest boy.
I wanted orange and yellow to suggest the heat and vibrancy of their lives. Unexpectedly the image looks like a boy soldier in the desert. He looks like he’s holding a gun in this image because in the original photo he is holding a long stick (for bashing the ground as he walks along).
This is part of what is interesting me – putting the small boy figures into spaces and finding out what different manifestations they take on. So to bring out the politics of childhood – I mean, for example; in this country: children out on their own and what this means depending on how they are perceived, neglected/independent/vulnerable; and for example, as these prints suggest, in another country, children forced into combat.
it’d be great to have comments on this; on what I’m saying or the prints themsevles.
I have a little boy waiting quietly by my side, sucking his thumb. He should be in bed.
I don’t much talk of my family here, but the two small boys who occupy a lot of my life are inspiring much of my current work. I am fascinated by their movements; their running fast and free; their small bodies in open expanses, so vulnerable and invincible at the same time.
I’ll put some images of a woodcut on this theme soon – just waiting on an order of ink.
a small finger is touching my elbow and he is standing very very close, I can ignore him no longer!
At Exeter Phoenix the current exhibition is ‘Mind over Matter’, a series of kinetic work. Machines that move in mysterious ways.
This work by Tim Lewis is much liked by many of the visitors, we had school groups in this morning and afternoon and I overheard many enthusiastic comments.
The ‘moving’ men spin round and are flashed at by tiny strobes which together trick the eye into believing in these walking men. They walk, quite fast, behind each other in a circle, disciplined like soldiers (but never moving on).
People love to wait for it to stop (to stay out of the way of the movement sensor that makes it spin) to stare at the men all in their slightly different positions.
This, I learnt today, is ‘persistence of vision’ – the delayed reception of information by your brain which means it then blurs together the images and so makes it look like the men are moving.
This is what makes animation, animation.
for a little while I have be looking for animations made by printmakers – and sure enough I have found some!
This guy Mark Andrew Webber has created what he calls his linomation. In a straight 18 full days he cut 300 plates to make this piece. This is inspiring for me. Go to..
http://www.markandrewwebber.com/index.php?/linomat…
my boys run a lot. and often far from me. in fields and woods (away from cars) this is great. I like to see them in open space.
the photos show the wood cut I am doing of the movement of boy running. its a joy to study closely their different body formations.
