2021 tick .....

For many, and I suspect most of us, it is wonderful to be saying goodbye to 2021 and welcome this New Year which we hope will be brighter, more gentle and more connected.  By that I mean that we have the opportunity to connect with those we have missed over the last couple of years, or places that we miss and have been unable to visit because of restrictions.  By no means do I think our troubles are over with this pandemic, but I hope this year allows us all more freedoms to spend time with those we love, and enjoy the places we love to spend time.

This drawing below is called 'hope' which is apt I think.  So many of my musings have begun with I hope this or I hope that.  This was not the only inspiration for this work.  I drew upon Emily Dickinson's poem

'Hope' is a thing with feathers - 

that perches in the soul

and sings the tune without the words

and never stops - at all.

 'Hope'

This series of five drawings are all done on architectural drafting paper which gives them a luminesecence which you cannot tell with the photographs.  And they are quite large - 900mm x 700mm.  It is one of those bodies of work that comes from that place where you let go and something else takes over.  I do not often work with this kind of emotive work, never comfortable with wearing my heart on my sleeve, and it is a deviation from the work I had been doing largely last year.

'Gathered'

I am hoping (there I go again!) that the work speaks for itself and speaks about the various aspects of feeling vulnerable and protected simultaneously over the last year.

'Sheilded'

'Solace'

I spoke in my last post of the exhibition 'Red Threads - Holding and Connecting' which was being held in Fiona and Barry's wonderful Deckled Edge Press Studio and which you can read about in Fiona's post.

'Held'

I am happy to say most of my work, large and the smaller ones too, found its way to other homes.  I had very lovely feedback from visitors to the small showing that they just stood in front of my work and gazed.  Lovely supporting words to hear. I think every artist wants to know that people take the time to really stop and look at their work.

Though there is much to say I am now preparing for teaching a few keen artists who want to explore the art of making books.  The studio is ready for show and tell next week and soon thereafter we will commence.  It will be great fun for me to revisit the techniques and design of artist's books as I have not made any for some time.  

Wishing everyone a much happier year this year.  I will add that my year was pretty easy and not that much different from other years.  We live on ten acres where every day I look down through the trees and along the coastline of the Sunshine Coast and am so thankful to live in such a gorgeous spot.  Not too difficult to isolate here - though I have missed that steady connection with family and friends.

the red thread ...

 

A showing of recent works by

Susan Bowers, Fiona Dempster, Stephanie McLennan and Tory Richards.

A collection of prints, mixed media drawings and artists' books

The theme 'The Red Thread' has given us all the opportunity to explore in our own way what it means to have threads holding and connecting us to each other and the world especially at a time when the world has seemed very strange indeed.

Sometimes it takes an exhibition or in this case a 'showing' of work to motivate you back into the studio, and back into the blogging world where I am quite shocked to realise it has been years since I last posted to tracemarks.  I have missed it. Now that I am here over three years later, not only has the format for blogging changed by I think my work has too.  Certainly I have been exploring concepts that have seen me wearing my heart on my sleeves a little and I will be posting more on that, and on the works that I am submitting for show, at a later stage.

I am including below one of the images of a series of five large drawings - 900mm x 700mm - which have been done with the idea of spiritual connections.  The intangible forces that surround us and hold us. As is often the case in a small version of a large work the detail is lost.  As you may have read in previous posts of mine that I have not been able to work with intaglio etching and since then have been searching for a way to reproduce the plate tone I so loved with copper plate printing.  This is the closest I have come to realising that effect with drawing.

'Hope'

21/52 'small landscape' .....

This little book consists of four folios sewn into the cover with pamphlet stitch.  The spine was then covered with a hinge of black leather.  As is often the case my inspiration is drawn from extensive journeys into the Australian outback.  I used some of the rusted paper I had in the studio as it reflects so much of the true interior colour and then painted small landscape scenes with black ink.  A few small details were added either with fine black pen or white conte.  The book was surprisingly difficult to photograph and so only a few snippets are shown here.

4/52 'remembering moeraki'

This book was made from drawings I had done whilst staying at Moeraki in New Zealand with fellow artist Steph McLennan.  What a trip we had - 8 or 9 days visiting the boulders at various times of day and tide, hundreds of photographs taken, work done en plain air which was fun as a number of people  came up to see what we were doing and look at our work.  One lady, an author visiting from America asked if she could buy the sketch I was working on!  I ended up giving her the sketch and just asking that she 'pay it forward' in some way.  She wrote back a couple of times and said she had had it framed and continued to love the drawing.  How lovely was that.

I know I have blogged once or twice about the Moeraki Boulders so will not ramble on about them much more other than to say that my drawings do not do them justice.  These drawings were purposely matched with the rusted paper as it was so strongly suggestive of the concretions at Moeraki.  Their underlay to my drawings on film suits my purpose here.  

In reality the boulders are dark and majestic and mysterious, and not like these drawings at all though the shapes are there and the passage of water around the boulders as the tide came in.

I could draw for a year at Moeraki, quite happily watching the different light and moods of the day affect the boulders.  There are many details to get lost in as well which are not shown here at all.  I believe that as time passes the shore line is eroding and more of these concretions/boulders are appearing.  Must mean I have to go back at some point ....

The book is about 40 cms in width and reads horizontally (making it very difficult to open and photograph.  I laminated two thicknesses of grey board for both covers which meant that on the front I could cut a window and insert this image.  It was great fun juggling ten needles to sew the book.  The photo above looks as though I have cleverly created an image of a boulder on the spine - though this is just a serendipitious shadow.

book 2/52 - 'musseander'

With a house full of adults and grandchildren and dogs, I did not manage to post this last night as is my desire each week - in accordance with my two week old 'book a week' plan!  Such is life.  I imagine through the year there will be many times I am away and though the book may be done, the post may be delayed.

This week's book is called 'musseander' and is basically a coptically bound book using Fabriano Tiepolo pages and architectural/drafting film - using the play of the transparencies to see imagery below though the truth is, I just love drawing on this film with ink, graphite and pencils.  It is so fluid and suits my sense of mark making.

In these first two photos the drawings are far more realistic that I would like but I enjoy seeing the contrast with drawings in the next couple of folios.  It has been a good excercise to start drawing again as I want to create two or three large drawings of musseander for our main living area.  Around our home I have many bushes of the white musseander (Capricorn Dream) flowering flamboyantly and they really are quite spectacular.  

These drawings are more bold and will be a benchmark for the late drawings.  I love that I will be able to use both sides of the film as a drawing and mark making platform.

Now that I have begun work back in the studio and my mind is racing with ideas, I wonder if I will find time each week to work on anything other than the book, which is my commitment!  I will make time.

Books 1 and 2 for 2018.  Am certainly not going to make too many larger books.  I am pleased to think that towards the end of January, four books will exist that were not planned and prepared for.  By the end of February there will be eight!  I will need to make a few books in advance as we are away much of February and I need to keep up the momentum.

a peep at 'branching out' ......

Tracemarks began as a way of keeping a record of what was happening in my studio - in a sense it replaced my 'drawing a day' books which were becoming harder and harder to maintain.  As such I am able to look back through my blog and see what I have been working on over the last few years and it can be such fun.  I also like the fact that because one includes photos in the posts, it has made me mindful to photograph my work.

Over the years I have been remiss and work has sold and I have no record of it at all.  Now I take oodles of photographs from all angles (I guess because books are like that) and have a memory track of the work I make.  This book below, 'Branching Out' is one that sold at the exhibition.  I have chosen a few of the many photos I took.  The book is smaller than my 'Standing on Fishes' book but still quite large as far as artist's books go.  Once again I have used film for the drawings, pen and ink and graphite, and layers of soft tengujo papers in between layers.

The sense I hoped to capture here was that of wandering through the forest and being entranced by the debris of the forest floor - the broken branches and their beautiful markings as they decay.  In fact I often spend my time in the forest/bush looking down rather than upwards!

These last few images are again of my 'Standing on Fishes' - still my favourite - which I finished in time for the exhibition.  I have used graphite and graphite pencils to draw some very simple lines and markings which seemed to tie the pen and ink drawings together.

When I posted on this book I had not in fact sewn it.  I chose a simple Japanese stab binding as it suited the aesthetic of these books and the front cover simply has a few lines embossed into it.  The book has a slip case of perspex and I also made covers for the books under which they sit for display.

growing a story .....

Another busy week in the studio and though the wall is growing and the story of 'here' expanding, it is not moving along as quickly as I hoped.

You learn such a great deal each time you make a book.  Maybe because I am primarily a 2D artist and see images in my head all the time as singles, I find it hard then to make multiples of very different images belong together.  Not sure that made sense ..... if I was just doing a series of artworks which spoke about our land I would be finding this way more easy than working it as a book - even though it will be an unbound book.  Within the book no one image can completely dominate the other and there needs to be a thread which ties the book together.  I am using numerous techniques as well which makes this quite a difficult story to tell but I do hope in the end the tale has a sense of belonging.  For most of course the underlying story will be completely obscure, but for those who are interested and ask me to lead them through the story, I will happily do so.

This first image is the one that was heading for the bin ... and the reason for that was twofold.  Firstly as an image it drowned all the other work and secondly, there was too much information in the one 'page'.  One of the things I love about artists' book work is the slow reveal, the fragments of stories.  Not reading the ending before one has passed through all the pages ... and even then wondering if it has finished, or if indeed you need to read the book again to find more of the story.

One tiny corner of our property.
A for avocado tree and all the circles are there because our next door neighbour has built his garden out of old tyres.

The mountain line over our site plan places us up here near the Glass House Mountains - anchors our land.
I still have a little more to add on this image.

My story board.

I want to bring back my magpie but am searching for the right way to work into the negative space - marks are needed!

Lots of work on the go ...

And another layer on the wall.

A few things I brought here from my parents home were these pots - four incredibly heavy rusted/metal looking pots that were used for pouring molten metal into shapes ..... can't think of their name for the moment.  One is over a metre tall.  They will be sitting at the middle level of our land as an installation - near the picnic shed.

Still working on the top layer here - over our house and shed.  

Finding ways to show all our trees and boulders.  

In a very strange way my book reminds me of 'The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady' though mine is more like 'the contemporary markings of a bush block dweller'!

Still needing lots more images - rope, some of the bush orchids, more steps perhaps and certainly crows, maybe even their nest.  I gave myself May to break the back of this work and I think that will happen but it certainly will not be near completion.  Over the next few months I will be able to refine images and add others.  Once I have an overgrown storyboard, I will ask Fiona to help me decide how this books reads best.