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BANKSIDE GALLERY ROYAL WATERCOLOUR SOCIETY ROYAL SOCIETY OF PAINTER-PRINTMAKERS

SPRING NEWSLETTER 2015

WATERCOLOUR ETC.

Or what do RWS Members do when they are not painting watercolours? In the RWS Spring Exhibition, Watercolour Etc., which follows on from our recent Watercolour Secrets exhibition, we will showcase some of the non-watercolour-based work done by our Members. Whilst we have some superb artists amongst our Members who work exclusively in this very difficult technique, we also have many who work in other media from time to time, or indeed as often as they use watercolours. So for this exhibition we are encouraging Members to include among their four submissions one or two that are not based on watercolour. We think this will make for a fascinating exhibition, throwing some light on work that is never normally shown at the RWS, including drawings, oils, acrylics, original prints of various sorts, collage and even sculpture. It will also throw light on the working methods of RWS Members. We are particularly keen to demonstrate that for many artists it is the subject or the ‘inspiration’ that can determine the medium used rather than the other way around.

Simon Pierse RWS, Planters’ Club [detail], watercolour & mixed media

There is an element of play and continuing experiment in the making of art and for some the most natural way to achieve this is by embracing a wide range of the ‘tools’ of the trade and remaining open to all possibilities, whether technical or expressive.

Artists, whether they regard themselves as watercolour artists, painters in oil or printmakers, are artists first and foremost, with something to say, and the way they choose to say it is really only the means to the end. Two of our previous Guest Artists, Albert Irvin OBE RA, and William Tillyer are both artists for whom water-based paint provides an alternative painterly vocabulary to the materials and methods that dominate their practice. Our next Guest will be Barbara Rae CBE RA Hon RE. She exemplifies the enthusiasm with which artists turn from one medium to another. Rae’s work embraces water-based mixed media, collage and acrylic and she is a remarkable printmaker. Her work in all media is instantly recognisable and, like handwriting, the marks she makes could not have been a made by another artist. Her voice remains distinctive across all the different methods she uses when making a picture. The imperative for an artist to move between disciplines can be dictated by practical considerations, for example when an artist is travelling and away from the studio. Sketchbook drawing and painting is often a first step in researching a new project and as Caroline McAdam Clark RWS says in the RWS latest book, Watercolour Secrets, ‘Seeing and drawing new places gives me the impetus to create new bodies of work and expand my personal visual lexicon’. Another member, Richard Pikesley, works in oil as well as a being a fine watercolour painter. He explains: ‘Painting in oils always has to be a planned process, the kit is rather bulky and messy and challenging to cart about, whereas with watercolour so little is needed’. He describes his ‘basic kit’ of a cigar box containing a tiny watercolour set, water, and smooth paper with a bulldog clip to fix it to the box lid as a mini easel. This goes in his pocket for use when he is doing other things and is surprised by an arresting subject. Sometimes a change of medium can serve to refresh an artist or further explore the possibilities of a subject or area of interest. An RWS artist who is searching for materials to help express a particular idea is Simon Pierse. His skill as a watercolour painter is second to none. He became interested in the idea of watercolour as a metaphor for memories – which, when he tried to picture them in his

head, seemed translucent and shifting. This led to experiments with tissue paper, transfer and collage in conjunction with watercolour. Then old photographs became another important element, as a key to his family history and the sense of who they were. He started using a technique for transferring colour-photocopied images of old photographs to watercolour paper using cellulose thinners. These personal works are a long time in the making and Simon works on several at a time, tearing off or adding fragments. These works may spend time untouched in the studio before Simon might return to add more layers of collage or paint. Richard Bawden RWS RE will be the Featured Artist in Watercolour Etc., displaying his prints alongside watercolours to demonstrate the two strands of his work. He is showing a larger display than other Members giving visitors an opportunity to examine the relationship between his two chosen media.

WORKING IN TWO MEDIA

Annie Williams RWS RE, Pots and Doodles, aquatint

When asked what I do, I usually describe myself as a ‘painter/printmaker’. Ever since my days at Art School where etching was probably my first love, I have worked the two mediums alongside each other. At College I worked in oils, but switched to watercolour when painting at home with young children, as it was much easier to clean up at short notice. Painting and printmaking very much feed each other. My etchings are frequently worked from a painting, but on a smaller scale, and I think my painting has benefitted from working more with tones and restricted colours in etching. Currently my prints are mainly in aquatint, which is rather like working in watercolour in reverse, using a brush. Most prints also have a little added colour using watercolour wash.

Richard Pikesley RWS, Flood, Evening Sky, From Valley, oil on canvas

The Royal Watercolour Society Archive holds a collection of work by the most illustrious British watercolour painters of the last two hundred years. We are extremely proud of our past Members, many of whom were expert in other fields of activity just as artists are today. Cross fertilisation of creativity from one activity to another has a long history. This exhibition is intended to show that RWS Members are above all artists for whom watercolour is a necessary medium although not exclusively their only means of expression.

Wendy Jacob VPRWS

Etching is, I think, more of a technical challenge where ‘happy accidents’ can occur as well as disasters! There are possibly more ups and downs for me in the printmaking. The excitement of the first print from a plate balances the sometimes more tedious work of printing an edition. On occasions when the painting or print is not working well,, it can be a relief to turn to another medium with different technical challenges. With watercolour I need daylight, and hence I tend towards printmaking in the dark winter months, and spend most of my summer painting. I do like the fact that I can keep a copy of a print for myself, whereas once a painting is sold, it’s gone!

Annie Williams RWS RE

INTERVIEW

In conversation with Richard Bawden RWS RE Richard Bawden is a printmaker, painter and designer who is particularly attracted by atmosphere, oddity, texture, pattern and the austere. Son of the renowned artist Edward Bawden, Richard was born in 1936 in Braintree, and was the fourth member of his family to attend the Royal College of Art. Tell me about your childhood and the presence of art in your early years… Art was always in my family: paintings, pottery, prints and decoration. At school I had excellent art teachers and every year I won the art prize; by the age of eleven I knew I would be an artist. I was always drawing, and learnt to cut lino from my father, who also suggested I should paint a large mural on a wall outside the kitchen door, and I later decorated the loo door and passage beside it. I think the most important thing my father taught me was to look, and analyse what I saw.

it was at this time that I first did etching. Edward Ardizzone taught illustration. All these tutors made a lasting impression on me. At the time it was Pop Art, Union Jacks and Op Art; not my scene, enjoyable to look at but for me, superficial and meaningless. The RWS Spring Exhibition, Watercolour Etc. looks at the other media in which our artists work. You are a Member of the RE and printmaking is fundamental to your practice, tell me about you multifaceted career and the reasons behind working in more than one technique…

Who/what has influenced your work most significantly and why? My first year at Chelsea, in foundation, was a lot of drawing; life class and composition. Inspirations at the time were Samuel Palmer, the poetic visionary, Francis Towne, with his large abstract landscape watercolours, Richard Dadd, intense, meticulous and methodical. Also Edward Lear and Piranesi’s copper plate engravings. As my taste developed it was a mixed love: Aubrey Beardsley’s line illustration, early abstract developments of David Bomberg, Wyndham Lewis’s extraordinary literary abstracts of the First World War and the collection of Bloomsbury and Charleston artists. What effect did the various artistic institutions that you attended have on your work? From Chelsea I went to St Martins: illustration and lithography under Bernard Cheese and Roger Nicholson, life drawing with Vivian Pitchforth and Anthony Caro, whom I remember making me look at the richness of form. After two years of National Service I was in graphic design at the RCA, later transferring to printmaking under Julian Trevelyan, Alistair Grant and Edwin Ladell;

Richard Bawden RWS RE, Old Cox [detail], etching

Richard Bawden RWS RE, Staircase to the Library, linocut & etching

I have a compulsion to draw and paint; and natural feeling for design, which is why I work in both watercolour and printmaking. I have no strong preference for any medium, and often combine them. I spend some time looking at everything I want to include in the composition; my imagination discriminates and selects the forms and shapes which work together: plants, trees, landscape, sky, people, interiors and cats. Inspired by the spontaneous quality of watercolour, I produce direct watercolour drawings using a sable brush or a dip pen fed with paint; this enables me to hold the composition together with line, onto which I apply colour freely.

“I have a compulsion to draw and paint; and natural feeling for design, which is why I work in both watercolour and printmaking. I have no strong preference for any medium, and often combine them”.

As a printmaker I create linocuts and etchings: the latter with me are usually linear and tonal, often painterly, but linocuts are uncompromising, often with blocks of colour and strong pattern. Making a print is a way of developing an idea into a considered design. Staircase to the Library is a print where I have combined etching and lino; the drawing is etched and printed in sepia, and when dry, several lino blocks are used to add the colour. The print shows the lino cut design that I have printed on the walls of our staircase; murals are a large scale challenge. Some of my etchings are hand-coloured with watercolour; I have the freedom to change and vary a design by using different techniques. Scenes of domesticity feature heavily in both your painting and printmaking, what is it about this subject matter that keeps you returning to it and re-working it? I do not consider myself a ‘domestic artist’; nor a follower of the Kitchen Sink group painters, but I do paint and draw wherever I am; often interiors and some with views through windows. I like the contrast of verticals and structure; pictures in frames, hanging curtains alongside the organic flow of subject matter; people, cats, vases of flowers and a blazing log fire.

Richard Bawden RWS RE, Bamboo Hall, watercolour

I also paint in the garden, and out in the Suffolk countryside or by the sea. Old Cox is from a drawing of our apple tree. What does being a Member of the RWS and RE mean to you both personally and professionally? It is stimulating and a pleasure to be a Member of the RWS and RE; there is much to learn from other artists. The trips to India and Malta had the intensity of working in a group, in a new and different light. I also appreciate the challenge of Society projects; meeting other Members to look and work together. As I draw on the spot, I particularly responded to the RHS scheme last summer; to travel to the splendid gardens of Harlow Carr in Harrogate and Rosemoor in Devon. I made several drawings in the Albert Hall, and one that I later developed into a large linocut. What are you working on at the moment?

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is stimulating and a pleasure to be a Member of the RWS and RE; there is much to learn from other artistsâ&#x20AC;?. Priority is work for our major Society shows in the spring, Watercolour Etc., alongside commissions for engraved glass and textiles, and a variety of work for one man exhibitions in the summer. You have exhibited internationally and with huge success, is there anything that you would still like to achieve? What does the future hold for you and your work? I am not good at forward planning; but my ambitions are to fulfill all the ideas that touch my imagination.

Hatty Davidson

BARBARA RAE

Guest Artist: Watercolour Etc. Painter and printmaker Barbara Rae, CBE RA Hon RE, is the fourth Guest Artist in the 2015 Spring Exhibition. A Royal Academician, Rae’s work is exhibited internationally and held in private and public collections worldwide. A respected and consummate colourist, she cites Antoni Tàpies and Richard Diebenkorn as artists she admires, but, it must be said, owes nothing to their panache or techniques, or for that matter her Edinburgh Art College tutors, having found her own unique voice very early in her vocation. She uses a whole range of painting resources in her art, from different types of Japanese hand-made papers, to all kinds of water-based paints and acrylics, (she dislikes oils) and collage materials, interplaying flashes of real silver and gold to highlight aspects of the composition. Rae is not a landscape artist. Vast panoramas, swathes of poppies, and billowing clouds hold no significance for her. Her imagery combines an intense interpretation of spirit of place and mood with painterly abstraction. The article in the foreground is the point of departure, and always of a socio-historical or political nature. What subject matter appeals to Barbara Rae? A semi-dilapidated but habitable Spanish finca on a mountain side, an ancient Celtic standing stone, a rickety gate held together with rusty wire and old rope on a wind-blasted Irish famine field appeal for the simple reason that they are evidence of the hand of mankind and age in process. If the backdrop has the dividend of strong pattern stamped into it, it will be incorporated. It might be that the backdrop alone constitutes the entire image because the same elements are evident, such as a vine terraced hillside worked for hundreds of years, or well frayed lobster baskets piled in haphazard rows on a pebbled beach, upturned boat nearby. Rae chronicles the beauty and the ravages of time passing. Travelling is her hobby and compulsion. Her travels take her to villages in France, Spain and Italy, or remote places in the Mojave Desert, Arizona, to record studies of ancient Anasazi Indian rock art. For dramatic light she prefers the west coast of Ireland or the coastal edges off the north of Scotland. Her own innovative techniques in printmaking have given her status a fine boost, the creation of prints hitherto thought impossible by master printmakers. Often it is difficult to tell the difference between one of her paintings and a print, especially if the print has been

Barbara Rae, St Bridget’s Day Ceide, mixed media on paper

through the etching press dozens of times to layer the inks - the edition number at the base identifying it as a print. Her methodology is traditional, but she never works from photographs. She begins with multiple sketches made on location, deciding in her studio which is best suited to prints, which to paintings, invariably developing the mature work into something quite different. Large canvases can begin flat, on the studio floor, paint sloshed on with a humble mop, before getting worked in the upright position. She welcomes accident and dissonance. For example, if outdoors and it rains she allows the water to smudge the work. Her sketchbook is her aide mémoire. “Sketches contain vital information and source material missing from a flat, lifeless photograph. My sketches are the basis for my work.” Gareth Wardell Selected images from her sketchbooks are reproduced in: ‘Barbara Rae – Sketchbooks,’ published by the Royal Academy, written by Richard Cork and Gareth Wardell. The Royal Watercolour Society Guest Artist initiative is a popular attraction with Members and visitors since its inception two years ago. We are grateful to Barbara Rae for agreeing to be a Guest Artist this year, and await sight of her images with keen anticipation at the RWS Exhibition – Watercolour Etc.. Her artwork is invariably life-affirming.

WHERE ARE WE GOING? The Paintings by Bill Henderson RWS

Bill Henderson RWS, Bright [detail], acrylic

In the 1970s I responded to the playful perversity of what Bill Henderson was doing as a painter, which seemed like deliberately obvious (and joyful) modernism when no one was sure anything like that could be OK, and I was just as positive about his subsequent approach, the use of a sort of abstract imagery that suggests figuration. Anyone coming new to his paintings today – he’s been off the radar since the mid-80s – might wonder what’s the main thing they need to know to ‘get’ what they’re seeing. Perhaps you only have to have the willingness to see at all. That means looking at the elements he works with, their logic, their limitations – what can and can’t be done – and how he manipulates shapes, colours and spaces in order to arrive at an overall richly structured arrangement. In Snarksland 1979 (see cover) there are fuzzy contoured areas of colour of varying sizes contrasted with

multi-coloured bands. The bands are both objects in themselves and units that multiply to become areas. The fuzzy single-colour areas create space openings while the bands close space up. Or do they? The more attentive you are the more the positions seem capable of changing. The question of what is a space and what is an object is never final. This painting is a good example of the way ‘madeness’ is primary with his paintings generally during this period.

“Of course it’s impossible really to see what came first in the making, but there is a feeling of an image developing by impulse and intuition [...] Looking becomes a game of differences: grasp a possible order before it mutates into a new configuration”.

As if looking at them is somehow to re-trace the steps he took in creating them. They are assemblies of events. Of course it’s impossible really to see what came first in the making, but there is a feeling of an image developing by impulse and intuition, partly solidly ’there’ and partly capable (apparently) of breaking apart and reassembling. Looking becomes a game of differences: grasp a possible order before it mutates into a new configuration. It’s not like an electronic game where nothing is ever really anything so changing doesn’t count for much. It is like architecture or sculpture – and also like music. Think of different contrasting rhythms in a relationship of syncopation, different arrangements of beats and pulses with their own events and spaces, all interconnected. (Funky Black & Catch Me from 1978 reminds me of Picasso’s Three Musicians 1921: both have angular structures of wonky squares like stacked planes, and to look at each is to be drawn into a world that is enjoyably unstable, with a constant visual flipping of planes and spaces.)

drama, darkness containing light. Chatting to Bill the other day, I asked if there was a starting point of an overall dark ground or does the darkness build as he completes the painting? His reply was straightforward and interesting. I also liked the way it developed, ending with a great thought about the necessity of the element of surprise in making art.

They begin with a dark ground usually, or the ground pretty rapidly darkens. I try not to have any idea as to what the painting will look like at the end, so there is a gamble – a risk. There is excitement in the making. The bits – the lines and everything else – are worked in as the painting progresses. One layer of bits provides a prompt for the next. Some remain for a time and others recede beneath the films of paint, like layers of sediment. They add to or combine with the next layer. Work continues on the painting until there is some kind of ‘stasis’ – I’m not sure if that’s the word, but I mean a kind of balance – so you feel that any further changes would tip the painting into a new phase. I find myself working less and In the paintings of the last less on the painting and few years, the basic comspending more and more ponent part is a mark like time looking at it. It sounds a burst of far off energy Bill Henderson RWS, Funky, Black & Catch Me [detail], acrylic more systematic than it is. coming out of darkness. I like the old Alan Davie story about loading up the It ranges from delicate and sparkling to broad and brush with the intention of placing it in a certain place fuzzy. The impression created overall is that of a tracon the canvas and then at the last minute putting it ery or network rather than a part-to-part construction, somewhere else instead. a feeling not of objects that might have weight (even though they might also be mere beams of light) but of Bill Henderson: The Other Side of the Line will be prefizzing bright dawning energies. At first the marks seem sented at Bankside Gallery from 10 - 14 June. similar to each other and then as you look an almost impossible variety of shapes and directions emerges. Darkness turns out to have a richly changeable charMatthew Collings acter, a mere dimness turning to a great crepuscular Art critic, writer, broadcaster & artist

RWS

NEWS OBITUARY

RWS EDUCATION PROGRAMME

CHARLES BARTLETT PPRWS Hon RE

SPRING 2015 The Spring Exhibitions will as usual be accompanied by a comprehensive education programme. This will include practical workshops at the Heatherley School of Fine Art. A family workshop will also take place at the Gallery on Friday 10 April. The programme also includes two fascinating talks:

Charles Bartlett PPRWS Hon RE in his studio

We are sorry to announce the death of Charles Bartlett PPRWS Hon RE. The following obituary is available in full online at www.theguardian.com

Charles Bartlett, known as Bob, who has died aged 93, was an exceptional painter and printmaker whose work brought the traditional seascape into the contemporary art world. He was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, to Charles, a naval radio officer, and Frances (nee Robinson). His father died when he was six years old, after which he, his mother and his younger sister, Joan, moved to Eastbourne, East Sussex. Bob attended Eastbourne grammar school and went on to enrol at the Eastbourne School of Art, where he excelled and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. Bob taught at institutions including Harrow College of Art in north-west London, where he was a senior lecturer from 1960 until 1970. For Bob, teaching was much more than financially beneficial; the interaction with his students and their work stimulated his own creative progressions and he thrived on seeing, and being a part of, the development of young artists. Bob became a member of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1961, later serving as Vice President, and a member of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1970, serving as President for five years from 1987. He was instrumental in the introduction of taught watercolour courses at Bankside Gallery.

On 1 April, Christopher Andreae will talk about the work of Mary Fedden, Mary Newcomb and Winifred Nicholson - three English women artists whose original work could only have been painted with an awareness of Modernism. On 22 April, Michael Bird will take a fresh look at the artists associated with St Ives in the mid-20th century, including Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron and Roger Hilton, who dismissed the influence of the Cornish landscape as ‘tomfoolery about scenery’.

Sophie Knight RWS, Hydrangeas, delphiniums and orange seed heads [detail], watercolour

For more information and to book see: www.royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk

ELECTION 2015

Artists working in water-based media (including watercolour, pen & ink, gouache and acrylic) may apply for Associate Membership of the RWS. Closing date: Monday 19 March 2015

For more information and to apply: www.royalwatercoloursociety.co.uk/election

CONTEMPORARY WATERCOLOUR COMPETITION 2015 6 - 18 March

Come and see the successful entries to this year’s RWS Competition, which aims to encourage innovation and experimentation in water-based media on paper. We were pleased to have art critic Richard Cork and British Council curator Andrea Rose on the judging panel.

PRIZES

Prizes have become a habit for RWS Vice-President Paul Newland. He has been awarded three in 2014, starting with the Sunday Times Competition, then The Discerning Eye and finally, making a hat trick, the New English Art Club in November.

NEWS

ANTHONY DAWSON YOUNG PRINTMAKERS & GWEN MAY AWARD

OBITUARY CAROLE HENSHER RE

The RE selected winners from very strong submissions for the Gwen May and the Anthony Dawson Printmaker Award. Meg Buick and Sarah Jarman became Associate Members for two years and received £1000 each. Jennifer Price was awarded a prize of £2000 and Frederic Morris £500.

Call for Entries NATIONAL ORIGINAL PRINT EXHIBITION The National Original Print Exhibition is open for entries from the beginning of March. RE Members are welcome to enter, as are printmakers from outside the UK. The judges this year will include the President and Vice President of the RE plus Stanley Jones, founder of the Curwen Studio; Deborah Orr, Guardian Newspaper columnist; Ciara Philips, 2014 Turner Prize finalist and Gill Saunders, Senior Curator of Prints at the V&A. Deadline: 30 June 2015 www.nationalprint.org

THE LONDON ORIGINAL PRINT FAIR

Carole Hensher RE working in her studio

We are sorry to announce the death of Carole Hensher RE. The following obituary is available in full online at www.independent.co.uk Carole was always interested in art, and after raising a family she took a BA in Fine Art (Painting), and progressed to an MA at Camberwell College. Carole Hensher’s prints are, on first acquaintance, colourful, attractive and even amusing – frequently they represent gloves, shoes, boots, corsets and bodices. The butterflies, flowers and leaves which appear in her works become symbols of time’s passing and effervescence. Carole’s principal print media were lithography and photolithography; she exhibited widely. Carole had a warm smile. In her manner she was gentle, kind and friendly, and always generous with her advice to other artists, even though she had come late to art as a profession. Carole Elizabeth Dilley, artist and teacher: born Ewell, Surrey 3 January 1946; married 1965 Chris Hensher (one daughter, two sons); died Sanderstead, Surrey 20 October 2014.

OBITUARY IRVINE LOUDON RE We are sorry to announce the death of Irvine Loudon RE. The following obituary is available in full online at www.oxfordmail.co.uk

Franks Wesselman RE, Swimmer II, woodcut

The RE is proud once again be exhibiting at the prestigious London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy from 23-26 April. With works from our newest Student Members to some of our longest standing Fellows, our stand promises to be a diverse and impressive representation.

FORMER Wantage GP, medical historian and artist, Irvine Loudon has died aged 90. He was a GP in the town from 1952 to 1981, a forceful proponent of the NHS and devoted to his patients. While in Oxford he trained as an etcher at the Oxford Printmakers’ Co-operative, and was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. His etchings were widely sold and exhibited, but he etched purely for pleasure. Dr Loudon’s sense of humour was notable and he was a dedicated practical joker.

Reflections on the first

NATIONAL ORIGINAL PRINT EXHIBITION So here we are at last at the end of a long process culminating in this first National Original Print Exhibition. This new annual fixture in the UK printmaking calendar follows in a long and vital tradition, as open submission print exhibitions have existed for just about as long as there have been printmakers. I’ve never failed to visit one and ever since I made my first etching, I’ve also never failed to enter. I love the whole process. Everything from the selection or creation of the pieces you decide to enter to the anxious anticipation (in those halcyon pre-digital days) of awaiting the judges’ verdict to drop through the letterbox. I have, of course, never relished the rejections (of which there have been many) but have always viewed them as an unavoidable potential consequence of entering.

The brave new world of digital submission is now well and truly established. It allows artists to enter competitions without the hassle and expense of framing and delivery but deprives them of the intimacy of their actual artworks being paraded past a panel of judges. So, are you being judged on the quality of your work or of your photography? The answer is that you will be judged on both. Judges make decisions on the basis of the image in front of them and bad photographs of even great works may still be rejected. The other by-product of digital entry is that the titles of the works take on a new significance. You may have written them discreetly with an HB pencil on the actual print, but digital projection may display them prominently as captions with almost equal importance to the image.

And how do you ultimately view an exhibition that you have entered? Perhaps your engagement with the show, and even your perception of its quality, will depend on the fate of your own submission. You love the ones you get into. The others are deeply flawed.

As for the exhibition, in my completely biased view it was a triumph. The work was wonderful and diverse and we had a great many visitors and good sales. We did not quite cover our costs but we came close. When you consider that this was a completely new venture I think that is quite amazing (and no small relief).

The shift from hopeful entrant to judge does not make for an easy or a comfortable experience but has many fringe benefits. The gratification of having a hand in shaping the exhibition as well as the camaraderie amongst the judges on the day are both hugely rewarding. Also there is abundant potential for inspiration from scrutinising 1500 pieces by your peers. Mind you, the acceptance of 163 pieces creates the regrettable potential for 1337 disgruntled friends and colleagues. I have been trying to determine if this experience has given me any valuable insight to impart to future entrants.

There were a huge number of impressive entries. As ever, a few artistic gems slipped through the net for want of that crucial deciding vote. My hope is that those artists who were not hung this year would still have been impressed enough when they visited the exhibition to want to keep trying in the future. I promise you that if you get in next year it will look even better.

Image: Liz Miller, A Classic on Vinyl: Debussy - Clair De Lune - Part II, etching & printed vinyl record

Mychael Barratt PRE

INTERVIEW

In conversation with Peter Ford RE Artist, curator, gallery director, traveller, papermaker and creator of inventive mixed-media prints on an epic scale, Peter Ford has a CV loaded with international awards for artworks which grace leading museums. Senior Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, former Vice-President of the Royal West of England Academy and member of the International Association of Papermakers and Artists, he has organized (with partner Christine Higgott) over 60 exhibitions – including the British International Miniature Print Exhibition, the remarkable Made in Japan at Bristol City Museum (2001) and A Time of Transition - Printmaking from Russia and Ukraine 1970–1992. Now in his 70s, Ford seems busier than ever, having had three residencies in China in as many years and with solo exhibitions in China and Switzerland in 2015. When I first met you, in the late 1980s, you were making subtle monochrome landscape etchings and biting

political satires. In recent decades, your work has become large, abstract, colourful. Why the change? You describe what has been seen most publicly. I still work on smaller pieces but 1994 was when I deliberately began to work bigger. I had seen various exhibitions in Eastern and Central Europe and realized I needed to work larger to have success in a broader context. I also wanted to get away from the health hazards of etching. I experimented with thin wood as a surface for collagraphs. The Openshaw Residency awarded to me at the Bradford Print Biennale in 1993 gave me access to Lowick House Print Workshop, an assistant and time to experiment. What inspired you to open your gallery in Bristol in 1987 and how has that influenced your art? I wanted to control what was exhibited and include things other galleries might deem non-commercial. Printmaking was the focus at Off-Centre Gallery (OCG), not an extra. I wanted curatorial control to include work I admired. Tell me how your links with Poland and Eastern Europe arose.

Peter Ford RE, Pulse (Russian), rubber stamp print

My first visit to Poland was in June 1985 during martial law. I attended the opening of an international exhibition and, whilst in Łódź, met artists from many countries. I began to acquire small artworks, sometimes by exchange, sometimes by purchase. I met the Russian artist Konstantin Chmutin in 1987 and he invited me to his home city, then called Leningrad. Three years later I went on to present an exhibition of printmaking from Russia and Ukraine in collaboration with Bristol City Museum. At the outset, I had no idea that project would be happening at the height of glasnost and perestroika. I witnessed remarkable

events. ‘A Time of Transition’, as the exhibition was called, toured five galleries in Britain, including Bankside in 1995, with sponsorship from British Airways, which provided flights for some exhibitors. How did your links with Japan and China come about?

“My output is varied: large prints on handmade paper, collagraphs, woodcuts, small etchings, not to mention bookplates and paintings in ink and watercolour”.

Curiously, links with Japan came from my visits to Poland. There I met Shigeki Tomura, Masataka Kuroyanagi and saw the extraordinary etchings of Kunito Nagaoka. Publicity for the forthcoming Japan 2001 Cultural Festival in Britain caught my attention and I had enough confidence to propose an exhibition to Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. ‘Made in Japan’ opened there in 2001 and at Bankside in 2002. The association with China began with an ‘out of the blue’ invitation to exhibit near Beijing in 2007. That happened because I had started to make bookplates, inspired by examples seen in Poland and Russia – little prints with big consequences for me. How did the Chinese know about me? Perhaps because my name was appearing in internationally circulated catalogues. When did you start papermaking? How has that fed your printmaking? I began making paper in 1994 under the influence of my friend Maureen Richardson, experienced papermaker and teacher. Making paper had a radical impact on my work. I saw the possibility of creating much bigger pieces by joining smaller sheets. Paper introduced an engaging craft element to my repertoire and I enjoy the physicality and sensuousness of it. You have collected metal scraps for a long time. Did you always collect them with a view to printing them? I collect anything less than two millimetres thick that will go through an etching press. Some are hammered on an anvil, which I started using 17 years ago. Discarded kitchen gadgets are good.

Peter Ford RE, Message from China [detail], woodcut on handmade paper

For example, ‘Culinaria’, which I made from a cut up and re-joined cheese grater, was used as a Bankside publicity image in 2012. Also ‘Street Language – Things Fall Apart’ (3.5 x 2.5 m) was adopted as the promotional material for the 2014 ‘National Original Print Exhibition’. Your print ‘Text Message’, of 2008 (First prizewinner in Warsaw) uses fragments of text as visual signifiers. Tell me about the word clues in your work. Attempts to learn Russian and, later, Japanese, intensified an existing interest in scripts and signs. (I am probably one of the few who attended an art school, Brighton, which included a course in italic handwriting). We were required to make an illustrated, handwritten book. My Warsaw work, ‘Text Message’, used Japanese characters for the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There was logic to the ‘message’ and my success may have been helped by a Japanese artist on the jury who would have ‘got it’. Additionally, since my seven-year-long engagement with China, I achieved an ambition to cover an eight-metre-wide wall, at the RWA (Bristol), with a script work. Although the text was indecipherable the artwork was of interest to visitors. Aesthetic engagement with script is not conditional on understanding the meaning. You are a recognized artist internationally, from Europe to Asia, yet not so much in your home country. Why? I didn’t have a standard art training and never had a contractual engagement with a London gallery. My output is varied: large prints on handmade paper, collagraphs, woodcuts, small etchings, not to mention bookplates and paintings in ink and watercolour. So I’m not an easy proposition for a gallery. Also I have been very persistent in my visits abroad – for example, eight times in China since 2007.

Peter Ford RE, Pulse (Chinese), rubber stamp print

in those countries, accompanied by fully illustrated catalogues. Have recent residencies in China moved your work in new directions? What will you show next? During my Spring 2014 residency in Ningbo Art Museum near Shanghai, I started my ‘Pulse Project’. This involves repeated printing of the word for pulse in nine different languages

Do you feel printmaking enjoys the same status in the UK as in Poland, China or Japan? No. Far more print-focused exhibitions are presented

Anne Desmet RA RE

MORGAN DOYLE RE Between Silence and Noise

Morgan Doyle is serious about breaking the rules. Beneath his engaging Irish charm lies a fierce intelligence and ruthless determination to push the practice of printmaking beyond process and technique. In interview, he is thoughtful and eloquent but he can also make you smile. A mark maker by instinct Doyle makes works on paper about space and place. The spaces are evolving, shimmering, layered spaces, spaces that are slow, uncluttered and allow for imaginative transformation. The places in this new work are indeterminate. Doyle has moved on from definitive subject matter, the Irish landscape and the shipyards of his native Cork to somewhere less fixed. He explains this new work as being more about the destruction of space. He talks eloquently about the manmade destruction of war or environmental disaster, the tremendous noise of the devastation followed by eerie silence.

There are close connections between his ideas and working processes, the wiping out, the ghost image and the discarded. “I start with a series of marks. Whether I am going to etch the plate or make a monoprint, at the beginning I just put almost anything down. I have an idea in my mind how I want it to construct, so I almost build the image from a very simple mark and then it constructs itself. Then I wipe it away and start again, a trace image of the first one will be there, and then perhaps I will put an awful lot of information onto the first plate. I will print that and then afterwards I will use the second print as the beginning of the next print. The second print that’s left, the ghost image that’s left on the plate, that is the beginning of the next image. So the first image may be discarded completely and then the second image becomes the final image. In this new work, I am using monoprint, lithograph and etching, and often I will draw back into it afterwards with charcoal or pen or I may chine-collé the whole lot, so I am working on an awful lot of processes. I do not think about them as being processes, they are just part of the making of this thing. I love the process of printmaking, but I never wanted it to restrain me. I never wanted to be classed as a printmaker, I never wanted to be classed as a painter, I just wanted to make art. There is a difference. If you concentrate on getting the etching perfect, you can lose that spontaneity and it doesn’t have that kind of freshness. What I do is I intend to make them fresh-looking even though they have taken a long time to do. I know everyone’s work is mental, but I tend to work until 3am or 4am almost every night of the week and that I think

“I start with a series of marks. [...] I have an idea in my mind how I want it to construct, so I almost build the image from a very simple mark and then it constructs itself ”. Morgan Doyle RE, Narrow Strip [detail], lithograph monoprint

is the best time, when everyone else is asleep you can just really focus and know that nobody will disturb you even in a physical way, it’s just “phiff ” you’re doing it.” Doyle is also making collages, “I am making a series of collages. Often when I reject prints I get rid of them altogether, but I have recently made a series of 30 which are collages made out of prints I had rejected, but lots of parts of those prints were good, so I picked them out and there are now going to be a series of collaged prints. They look like etchings because I put them through the press chinecollé, they don’t look stuck-on like collage from, you know, Picasso or whatever when he made collages, they’re super-adhered to the plate and then they’re printed.”

Doyle compares his work to an open-ended discussion, mentioning his favourite writer Samuel Beckett and the Malloy - Malone trilogy. “The reason I really like Beckett in particular is because he never worries about commas or sentences, or when they should stop or when they should begin, and I think sometimes when I am doing my prints I feel a little bit like that. I feel like I don’t really have to begin at any point or end at any point. I am also attempting Ulysses at the moment for the third time and I will surely get to the end of it one day, but maybe that’s not the point, so I think that’s the sort of thing I’m referring to at the moment.” The work is pervaded by a certain austerity and seriousness,

Morgan Doyle RE, Encircled [detail], oil on linen

a mood echoed by Doyle’s interest in music and the other artists he looks to for inspiration: “I play a lot of Handel operas when I’m doing my work late at night, and I listen to Purcell, maybe The Fairy Queen one night and Handel the next night. Generally, it tends to be those two I listen to. I like the way that Purcell’s funeral music for Queen Mary is haunting, it’s jolly at times and it’s also celebratory. “ “A few artists I reference. I love the work of Prunella Clough. I think she was a great painter and a great influence on a whole generation of young artists, admired a lot at the time. I like people like Sandra Blow who made those huge abstracts

in very bold patterns. Graham Sutherland, I love his work. That seems to be the period I really like. It’s almost like I was almost born at the wrong time. I love the earthiness of the work and the honesty, and that is a bit of what I’m striving for in my own work. You just look at it and you don’t need to know what it’s about, it’s just good, it works.” Morgan Doyle: Between Silence and Noise will be presented at Bankside Gallery from 17 - 28 June.

Monica Petzal Artist & gallerist

THE MASTERS

Relief Prints | November 2015 Over the next few years Bankside Gallery will be hosting a series of annual exhibitions, each highlighting a specific printmaking technique. By focusing on one print medium these exhibitions will be an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the immense variety of work being produced by contemporary printmakers. The Masters exhibitions are intended to bring alive the working practices of printmakers, encouraging an understanding of the different processes and to demonstrate to Bankside Gallery visitors how a limited edition print is made. As well as inviting members of the Society to submit their work, the exhibition will be open to submissions from outside the Society. I’m delighted to have been invited to curate the first of The Masters series which showcases relief printmaking. In an age where so much can be created on a computer screen and where digital production is the norm, this exhibition will celebrate this direct printmaking process in which the hand of the artist is so clearly visible. I’m hoping to communicate to visitors the atmosphere of the print room - the presses, the smell of ink, the tools and rollers with their worn wooden handles bearing evidence of years of constant use and prints hanging in the drying racks. When I first walked into the print room at Central Saint Martins as a sculpture student in

the mid-1980s and spotted the impressive - and rather daunting - Albion press, and was handed my felt roll of engraving tools and a pristine boxwood block, I felt I’d found my perfect workplace and swiftly transferred to the printmaking department. What appealed to me as a student was the directness of the relief printing process and each day in my studio I still get immense pleasure from cutting smooth curls from a piece of lino or watching a pale line appear as I engrave a darkened wood block. I enjoy each stage of the process equally, the transformation of a pencil sketch as it is reversed and transferred onto a block, the cutting and finally the printing. The pulling of the first proof is a moment of intense anticipation and each proofed block will inform the decisions that I make when cutting the next. Throughout the cutting stages I play with positive and negative shape and line, trying to visualise the print while working in a mirror image. I am frequently surprised, myself, by the end result as no print is merely a reproduction of an existing drawing or painting. The work exhibited will display a dramatic range of scale - from the smallest boxwood engravings with painstakingly exquisite detail to large scale prints vigorously cut and gouged and printed with visibly heavy deposits of ink. There will be powerful, graphic black and white prints and also those made of several blocks with transparent colours and soft texture and tone. We’re encouraging RE members who work in other media to try their hand at relief printing. It may be a technique they have never used before, or an opportunity to return to relief printing after a break. Lack of equipment should not be a hindrance. Without access to a press, a block can be hand-burnished using a wooden spoon from the kitchen drawer or even an old tobacco tin as employed by HJ Jackson RE in the wilds of North Norfolk. I remember a visiting tutor at Central, Katie Clemson RE, even printed an exceptionally large woodcut using a full sized road roller, but I honestly can’t safely advise on this method… As all RE members will be able to exhibit at least one print I hope you’ll take up the challenge and find it an inspiration.

Angie Lewin RE, Lakeside Teasels, linocut

Angie Lewin RE

BANKSIDE GALLERY

A Destination for Works on Paper The status of artworks made on paper is continually changing and with the acceleration in the popularity of video, performance, and conceptual works in contemporary galleries, some may believe that those media that are supported by paper could be suffering, but in actuality, they are seeing a significant resurgence. Amongst the four shortlisted artists for the Turner Prize this year, three of which were video and film makers, there stood a printmaker, Ciara Phillips, whose work was applauded for its energy and light and which provided a distinct change in gear from the three other darkened rooms. 2014 also saw the blockbuster exhibition at Tate Modern, Matisse: the Cut Outs; a homage on a grand scale to paper and its versatility. The institution also held Louise Bourgeois: Works on Paper and Late Turner: Painting Set Free, which looked at paper both as a base for preliminary and exploratory works and as the foundation for large scale final pieces. Bankside Gallery’s relationship with works on paper goes back to its establishment in 1980 when the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE) first made the Gallery their home. These two groups of artists, though distinct in their media, share a common support in paper, and their union at Bankside exemplifies

Lars Nyberg ARE’s drypoint tools: copper plate, steel needle and burnisher

RWS Autumn Exhibition Private View at Bankside Gallery

paper’s adaptable nature. The exhibitions that promote this most clearly are the two joint shows, Off the Wall and The Mini Picture Show which are held every year and allow the Societies to be seen together. With everything from works in watercolour, acrylic, gouache and pen and ink to lino cuts, wood engravings, etchings and monoprints, the aesthetic outcomes are diverse. The one shared element is paper. Both Societies continue to work with paper and have brought it into the contemporary art world, not only in the work that they produce but also by holding annual competitions. The Contemporary Watercolour Competition and the National Original Print Exhibition provide platforms to artists who continue to explore work that can be made on and with paper. Hatty Davidson