Changes on the horizon

I have had an offer to join the Printmaker's Conspiracy, a local group of printmakers. I am excited about this and the opportunities to exhibit within a supportive art group.

Working as a painter has always meant an element of isolation for me. While this is good from a - lack of distraction - point of view, it can be tough to get perspective without feedback. Printmaking is proving to be a more social setting and I find that I am pushed more to complete a task before the next gathering around the press.

I am considering renting a studio in a communal art space in town. This will increase my overheads, but will provide a group environment to work in and a gallery to show my work Downtown. Tough call financially in this climate and I need to give it some hard thought, but I think this could be a positive step in the long haul.

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Encaustic Monoprint Technique

Today I visited a printmaking friend's studio. Amy is experimenting with encaustic monoprints. I have never heard of this before so I was excited to have a demo. Here is the basic process: 1. Heat up the homemade heat box. 2. Rub the beeswax pigment sticks on the metal surface of the heat plate to melt them. Create a design on the plate with one or more colors. Step 3. Lay a piece of rice or rag paper face down on the painted design and cover with newsprint. Burnish. Step 4. Carefully pull the paper away from the heat plate. Steps 5-6. Clean the heat plate with paper towels. Add more color to the heat plate and repeat the process to add patterns or more color to the print. The smell of the wax is yummy and the pigments are really thick and rich to work with. I had a little play to get a feel for what the print is like (image below). Now I want to build a heat box and play!!

Peacock Paintings/prints

I'm working on the peacock paintings at the moment and some relief prints. I am slowly filling in the shapes and colors of the paintings, starting from the top and working down with each color. I'm grouping them with my 8 color reduction cut relief print. Also a feather linocut and painting, both in their early stages. The linocuts below are variation experiments based on the imagery above. It still feels like I am a long way to completion, but hopefully they will pull together fast at the detail stage.

DeMeng Workshop

We made crazy vehicles in Michael DeMeng's workshop. Here are a selection of some of the works in progress: Here we had a critique with Michael discussing everyone's progress. I loved this steampunked up critter! This is the cool studio by the harbor that we worked in for four days, pretty cool view! Later in the day we had a project with Tracy and Teesha Moore with a bunch of artists from different workshops.

Cricketts Inky Art Blot

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