LOCKDOWN MONOPRINTS

DRAWINGS AND MONOTYPES

Drawing has always been a central factor for me as the most immediate route to clarifying vision. This foundation was reinforced by the initial term of compulsory life drawing at the Royal Academy Schools, during which I eventually became interested primarily in everything around the model, and increasingly with the interior space. Then with the award of the Sir David Murray Landscape Scholarship, which brought me to work in Suffolk for the first time in 1971, a lifelong involvement with landscape in the UK and abroad became the focus for study of the visual world and its energies.

When the 2020 lockdown made travel impossible, a new look at landscape subject matter was invoked. Until then always preferring to work through direct drawing and painting, printmaking now became an inviting medium in tune with the times, with possibilities incorporating degrees of uncertainty and disconnection. In particular, the characteristics of monoprinting methods unfailingly impart uniqueness to each image, even within a series of monotypes, and in this sense, although achieved through an indirect process, they are true drawings, and quite distinct from editioned multiple prints of a single image. The resulting landscape monotype prints produced as explorations of the medium, brought into the studio impressions of freedom, immediacy, and engagement with the wider world during a time of restriction. Many of these works relate to the enduring sense and atmospheres of the East Anglian region and its coast.

CG.