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Reflections on Bill Jacklin’s Graphic Work Jill Lloyd
Fig. 1
The Rink, D, 1995 (detail) Monotype Image 28 x 23 in. (full page)
Bill Jacklin has a deep-rooted instinct for graphic art. As an artist for whom drawing – be it with the pen or the etching needle – is like breathing, the graphic medium of printmaking comes naturally and lies at the very heart of his work. Yet if Jacklin’s prints originate in his instinctive mastery of line, they are equally striking for their painterly qualities: they incorporate the free, expressive touch of an artist accustomed to exploring the fluid effects of paint and colour. Indeed, Jacklin’s graphic work occupies a magical threshold between drawing and painting. The very process of printmaking releases in the artist an intense yet liberating creative state that comes close to the focused mood of a child at play. For all his seriousness of purpose, printmaking frees Jacklin from the responsibility of large-scale work and reveals him at his most open and experimental. The artist is nevertheless only able to pursue this experimental path because he has an absolute mastery of his craft. Jacklin began to study graphics at the age of eighteen. When he returned to art school after briefly working as a commercial designer in the early 1960s, he gravitated naturally towards printmaking. Here Jacklin learnt the etching technique, which he favours doubtless because it is the graphic medium closest to drawing that also allows for atmospheric and textural
effects. Whether it was the drawn mark that scored the paper or the etching tool that scored the plate, Jacklin experienced line from the outset as a direct conduit of his thoughts and feelings about the world – clearly evident, for example, in the moving drawings he made in 1963 of his sick, alcoholic father, in which observation and emotion are balanced on a knife-edge. When he came to reformulate these moving drawings of his father as etchings, a highly experimental pathway opened up in Jacklin’s art. For example, while he was still learning about etching techniques he left one of the etched heads of his father in the acid bath for an entire weekend. Returning two days later he found the room blackened and steaming from the toxic fumes of the acid, and his etching plate shattered into several pieces. After washing the plate, Jacklin pieced it back together and printed Portrait of My Father (1963; p. 28), which incorporates the destruction wreaked by the acid in the fragmented image. The violence of this encounter with the darker side of the graphic medium is expressed not only through the shattered plate but also through the dramatic collision of deepest shadow with otherworldly light. Jacklin’s growing mastery of the etching medium came to the fore in the Anemones series of 1977 7
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Hong Kong Suite: Snake Shop Hong Kong, 1994 Etching Image 10 x 12 in. Paper 17 x 20 in. 62
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Above
Hong Kong Suite: Queensway Looking East, 1994 Etching Image 12 x 10 in. Paper 21 x 18 in. Below
Queensway Looking East, 1993 Pastel Image 12½ x 9½ in. (full page) 63
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Above
Increase, NYC V, 2001 Monotype Image 8 x 10 in. Paper 15½ x 17 in. Opposite
Increase I, 2001 Monotype Image 10 x 8 in. Paper 24 x 18 in. 84
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85
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Reflection VII, 2001 (detail) Monotype Image 16 x 20 in. Paper 22 x 27 in. 92
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Above
Chiesa II, 2003 Monotype Image 19¾ x 15¼ in. Paper 28¾ x 23½ in. Opposite
Verso il Mare II, 2004 (detail) Monotype Image 19¾ x 15¾ in. Paper 27 x 22½ in. 118
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150
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Clouds and Sea I, 2015 Monotype Image 16 x 20 in. Paper 22 x 27 in. 151
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A limited edition of 50 copies of this book contains the following work: Bill Jacklin The Rink, 2016 Soft-ground etching on Somerset Satin White 300 g paper 11 x 8ž in. Edition of 50 copies, printed by Simon Lawson at Huguenot Editions, signed and numbered by Bill Jacklin
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