Day 10
Friday 30th August 2024
Experimental Printmaking
The pressure was off, not that anyone was pressuring me to produce finished pieces; it was all self-imposed, nevertheless, my final day of the bursary at the Curwen and I felt both happy to have reached the stage where I felt I had learnt enough of a new art form to be able to incorporate it into my future practice and happy that I still had time to produce something new.
Yesterday had been a really stimulating and enriching experience, so I took to the smaller stone with a looseness of style that I should really adopt more often.
Any resemblance to Issam Kourbaj’s style of mark making are purely coincidental(!)
However I also returned to a material I had used a few years ago, namely masking tape. This I stuck to the printing paper prior to printing on it. The use of tape gives the print a ‘living’ quality as the tape, not being acid free, will yellow and deteriorate over time, thereby changing the look of the print.
The position of the tape and the amount of tape, being variable, also changes the nature of each print compared with the next.
The free-flowing mark making printed over the more formal structure of the billboard image made for an interesting contrast. You may also notice that I was able to lighten the billboard a little from those produced the day before.
A stronger etch appeared to have done the trick.
And that brought the day’s printing to a close. All that remained to do was grind back both stones and the large stone was going to be a challenge.
After four grinds with coarse grit, the stone was still showing a very defined waxy ghost – it was going to be a lot of hard work.
Two weeks, in which life outside art and printing was put on hold. It’s rare that these types of opportunity happen, so I have been very grateful for this one to come my way. The Curwen staff have been so welcoming, the facilities truly wonderful and I leave being able to say that my work was once ‘alongside’ Paula Rego’s and that I ‘collaborated’ with Issam Kourbaj. Stone lithography still has many mysteries, but fewer now than a fortnight ago.