Blowing our own trumpets!

Barry and I were very happy to learn that we had been included in an article on ‘Family Ties: Related Artists Across the West’ in the November’s issue of Southwest Art magazine.  I was even happier to be told that my painting of Wicken Fen Autumn was going to be on the front cover.

I continue to walk my mile and a half to university two or three days a week.  It has been just gorgeous weather and walking across Jesus Green and Midsummer Common or along the River Cam is such a treat. The photos below epitomise Cambridge!

So far we have had demonstrations of Intaglio, Relief Printing, Screen Printing, Photo Etching and Viscosity Printing!  To ensure that my head doesn’t spin off my shoulders I have focused in on a little of what I know and am experimenting with dry point, drawing, scraping and burnishing to see what happens.  There is such a temptation to try everything and get nowhere, so I am sticking with Intaglio at the moment on the advice of my tutor.  

Gathering my thoughts

At last, I have some time to think about my MA.  Last week I attended my first Contextual Studies tutorial.  I really liked it.  Going over my notes, I am amazed at how many new avenues of enquiry this has opened up.  I find myself searching for information on W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn, leading me onto Grant Gee’s film, entitled Patience (after Sebald), which I am now trying to source.

William Carlos Williams poem, A Sort of a Song was mentioned, as was Geothe’s Colour Wheel, (did I know that Goethe wrote about this?).  Death of the Author by Roland Barthes, which I think may require me to undergo a brain transplant and one of Barry’s favourite books by Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces was also discussed briefly, including reference to a ‘Nekiya’ and how Post Graduates ‘must endure the journey’ which I suppose is all to do with dismantling oneself!   I can’t wait!   A book I am interested in reading but have never heard of it before is Mr. Weston’s Good Wine by T.F. Powys … and that isn’t all…. but my head is spinning and I must go out, battle the gale force winds and buy a cauliflower.

On a more practical level, the hot plates in the print room are very high and the rollers are heavier than I am used to, so in addition to the fact that I have to walk over a mile to get to University in the morning and back again in the evening, and have been dragged off to circuit training by my friend Jo at the rowing club, I shall also get a little exercise climbing onto the provided step to attend to my plates and hopefully strengthen at least one of my arms in the process!  I have prepared two plates.. but for what?

Before I go, since I am now back in Wicken Fen country, below is a new image..  now, for that cauliflower…