I have been a print maker, steady for the last 6 years. Over the last year and a half i have done strictly relief,linoleum block, wood cut. I've pulled prints, full of line and form. I am mostly a representational artist, but I have begun to revisit my love of pattern and color. Before that I used to switch back and forth between etching and relief printmaking,then I decided in the Autumn of 2007, to just strictly do relief.
I didn't suddenly hate etching, I just wanted to focus, on one thing, at that time I figured I would switch back and forth on a yearly basis. When I came back in September to the studio, I thought alot about , How now it was 2008, and I should be doing etching, but I didn't really feel like switching, which frankly had my little obsessive mind worried,maybe I just didn't have any skill at etching , where I had skills at relief printmaking, and then some, maybe that's why I didn't want to switch. Then thankfully my inner wisdom, took hold of me and game me a shake, and said "there could be worse things, are you really questioning whether you should continue doing a type of printmaking that you are really good at?"
Yes it's true, I can be that insecure about my art. So I took a deep breath, and realized I'm the one setting the schedule here, so it was up to me to choose. I chose to continue on with the relief.
Well that was until I joined in the soft ground practicum, where we experimented with soft grounds, and it was great, wiping a copperplate, came back to me, with ease, phew! It made me want to take a little break from doing relief printmaking, and concentrate on etching.
Recently a artist friend and I decided to trade prints, she has one that I really like, and vice versa, it's also giving me the idea to return to an old set of plated, I haven't printed in years, and revist them, and possible go from there, and create another version of this quilt series, I started over 5 years ago.
Either way, the possibilities are endless.
3 comments:
I think I'd go for the relief too. It's much more sensual.
that's true, it's very easy to have the sensation of the cutting and the inking influence your print, or at least for me it is.
I enjoy hearing about your process! It's funny how we can sometimes get sidetracked by what we think we "ought" to be doing, when the thing that really calls us is right in front of us. Then those side explorations can be really eye-opening at times. Keeps things loose and the creative juices flowing. This also reminds me a little of you talking about the progression of your self-portrait process. Moving through different creative stages.
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